


























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































a | 














































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE LIBRARY 
OF 
THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CALIFORNIA 
LOS ANGELES 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2007 with funding from 
Microsoft Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/catherinedemedi0Obalziala 





4 
Ag eo 
fi ei wy i, 
ye 


at 
o 


4 
LEIE 
ates 








H. DE BALZAC 


THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 


iv 


i ne 
“ahi 
ae ok . 





; 
ze 
eS 
x” 
; 
a 
, 
| 
1 


ee a ee a ae 


a . a eS 


—S ~~ ~ 9 


— 2 oe 














“I AM CHAUDIEU!” 





H. DE BALZAC 


— 


ABOUT 


CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC] 


AND OTHER STORIES 


CLARA BELL 


WITH A PREFACE BY 


GEORGE SAINTSBURY 


ut 


PHILADELPHIA 
THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING CO., Ltd. 


1899 





PQ 

2173 

S46ESb 
1349 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


PREFACE . ° Che es ° eg bs 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI 
INTRODUCTION : : : . . 

I. THE CALVINIST MARTYR . . . ° ° ° - 46 

II, THE RUGGIERIS’ SECRET . e 

Ill. THE TWO DREAMS . ° ty Cee ie Bou ° sas 


THE EXILES . . ° ° . 


THE MESSAGE . oc. Ge e 


VORV27 





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


“1 AM CHAUDIEU!” (p. 55) : ; : ; j Frontispiece 


PAGE 
‘““WE HAVE MADE ONE MISTAKE,’? REMARKED THE DUKE, PLAY- 


ING WITH HIS DAGGER ‘ 2 A ‘ : Eg SaNTOO 
YOU, MADAME, HAVE KILLED YOUR SON!”’ SAID MARY STEWART 197 
“you ARE A LOYAL SUBJECT,” SAID CATHERINE f . s. (243 


“AM I A KING?’ SAID HE BITTERLY r s ; ° + 290 
Drawn by D. Murray-Smith. 


PREFACE. 


Tuis book (as to which it is important to remember the 
Sur* if injustice is not to be done to the intentions of the 
author) has plenty of interest of more kinds than one; but it 
is perhaps more interesting because of the place it holds in 
Balzac’s work than for itself. He had always considerable 
hankerings after the historical novel: his early and lifelong 
devotion to Scott would sufficiently account for that. More 
than one of the Quvres de Jeunesse (youthful works) attempts 
the form in a more or less conscious way: the ‘‘ Chouans,’’ the 
first successful book, definitely attempts it; but by far the 
most ambitious attempt is to be found in the book before us. 
It is most probable that it was of this, if of anything of his 
own, that Balzac was thinking when, in 1846, he wrote dis- 
dainfully to Madame Hanska about Dumas, and expressed 
himself toward ‘‘ Les Trois Mousquetaires ’’ (which had whiled 
him through a day of cold and inability to work) nearly as 
ungratefully as Carlyle did toward Captain Marryat. And 
though it is, let it be repeated, a mistake, and a rather unfair 
mistake, to give such a title to the book as might induce 
readers to regard it as a single and definite novel, of which 
Catherine is the heroine, though it is made up of three parts 
written at very different times, it has a unity which the intro- 
duction shows to some extent, and which a rejected preface 
given by M. de Lovenjoul shows still better. 

To understand this, we must remember that Balzac, though 
not exactly an historical scholar, was a considerable student 
of history ; and that, although rather an amateur politician, he 
was a constant thinker and writer on political subjects. We 
must add to these remembrances the fact of his intense interest 


* About. 


(ix) 


x PREFACE. 


in all such matters as Alchemy, the Elixir of Life, and so 
forth, to which the sixteenth century in general, and Cath- 
erine de’ Medici in particular, were known to be devoted. 
All these interests of his met in the present book, the parts 
of which appeared in inverse order, and the genesis of which 
is important enough to make it desirable to incorporate some 
of the usual bibliographical matter in the substance of this 
preface. The third and shortest, ‘‘Les Deux Réves’’ (The 
Two Dreams), a piece partly suggestive of the famous 
‘‘ Prophecy of Cazotte’’ and other legends of the Revolution 
(but with more retrospective than prospective view), is dated 
as early as 1828 (before the turning-point), and was actually 
published in a periodical in 1830. ‘‘La Confidence des Rug- 
gieri,’’ written in 1836 (and, as I have noted in the general 
introduction, according to its author, in a single night), fol- 
lowed, and ‘* Le Martyr Calviniste,’’ which had several titles, 
and was advertised as in preparation for a long time, did not 
come till 1841. 

It is unnecessary to say that all are interesting. The per- 
sonages, both imaginary and historical, appear at times in a 
manner worthy of Balzac ; many separate scenes are excellent ; 
and, to those who care to perceive them, the various occupa- 
tions of the author appear in the most interesting manner. 
Politically, his object was, at least by his own account, to de- 
fend the maxim that private and public morality are different ; 
that the policy of a state cannot be, and ought not to be, gov- 
erned by the same considerations of duty to its neighbors as 
those which ought to govern the conduct of an individual. 
The very best men—those least liable to the slightest imputa- 
tion of corrupt morals and motives—have indorsed this prin- 
ciple; though it has been screamed at by a few fanatics, a 
somewhat larger number of persons who found their account 
in so doing, and a great multitude of hasty, dense, or foolish 
folk. But it was something of a mark of that amateurishness 
which spoilt Balzac’s dealing with the subject to choose the 


PREFACE, xi 


sixteenth century for his text. For every cool-headed student 
of history and ethics will admit that it was precisely the abuse 
of this principle at this time, and by persons of whom Cath- 
erine de’ Medici, if not the most blamable, has had the most 
blame put on her, that brought the principle itself into dis- 
credit. Between the assertion that the strictest morality of 
the Sermon on the Mount must obtain between nation and 
nation, between governor and governed, and the maxim that 
in politics the end of public safety justifies azy means what- 
ever, there is a perfectly immense gulf fixed. 

If, however, we turn from this somewhat academic point, 
and do not dwell very much on the occult and magical sides 
of the matter, interesting as they are, we shall be brought at 
once face to face with the question, Is the handling of this 
book the right and proper one for an historical novel? Can 
we in virtue of it rank Balzac (this is the test which he would 
himself, beyond all question, have accepted) a long way above 
Dumas and near Scott ? 

I must say that I can see no possibility of answer except, 
‘*Certainly not.’’ For the historical novel depends almost 
more than any other division of the kind upon interest of 
story. Interest of story is not, as has been several times 
pointed out, at any time Balzac’s main appeal, and he has 
succeeded in it here less than in most other places. He has 
discussed too much; he has brought in too many personages 
without sufficient interest of plot; but, above all, he exhibits 
throughout an incapacity to handle his materials in the pecu- 
liar way required. How long he was before he grasped ‘‘ the 
way to do it,’ even on his own special lines, is the common- 
place and refrain of all writing about him. Now, to this 
special kind he gave comparatively little attention, and the 
result is that he mastered it less than any other. In the best 
stories of Dumas (and the best number some fifteen or twenty 
at least) the interest of narrative, of adventure, of what will 
happen to the personages, takes you by the throat at once, and 


xii PREFACE, 


never lets you go till the end. There is little or nothing of 
this sort here. The three stories are excellently well-informed 
studies, very curious and interesting in divers ways. The 
“ Ruggieri’’ is perhaps something more; but it is, as its 
author no doubt honestly entitled it, much more an ‘ Etude 
Philosophique”(Philosophical Study) than an historical nov- 
elette. In short, this was not Balzac’s way. We need not 
be sorry—it is very rarely necessary to be that—that he tried 
it; we may easily forgive him for not recognizing the ease and 
certainty with which Dumas trod the path. But we should be 
most of all thankful that he did not himself enter it fre- 
quently or ever pursue it far. 

The most important part of the bibliography of the book 
has been given above. The rest is a little complicated, and 
for its ins and outs reference must be made to the usual au- 
thority. It should be enough to say that the ‘‘ Martyr,’’ under 
the title of ‘* Les Lecamus,’’ first appeared in the ‘ Siécle”’ 
during the spring of 1841. Sovverain published it as a book 
two years later with the other two, as ‘‘ Catherine de Medicis 
Expliquée.’’ The second part, entitled, not ‘‘La Confi- 
dence,’’ but ‘‘Le Secret des Ruggieri,’’ had appeared much 
earlier in the ‘*Chronique de Paris’’ during the winter of 
1836-37, and had been published as a book in the latter year ; 
it was joined to ‘‘ Catharine de Medicis Expliquée ’’ as above. 
The third part, after appearing in the ‘‘ Monde’? as early as 
May, 1830, also appeared in the ‘* Deux Mondes’’ for Decem- 
ber of the same year, then became one of the ‘“‘ Romans 
et Contes Philosophiques’’ (Philosophical Romances and 
Stories), then an ‘Etude Philosophique,’’ and in 1843 
joined ‘‘ Catherine de Medicis Expliquée.’”’ The whole was 
inserted in the Comédie in 1846. 

‘« The Exiles’ (Les Proscrits) first appeared in the ‘“‘ Revue 
de Paris ”’ for May, 1831, and was almost immediately included 
in the ‘‘ Romans et Contes Philosophiques.’’ Its fortunes will 
be more fully given in the preface to ‘‘ Seraphita.”’ 


PREFACE. xiii 


Sensibility claims us in ‘‘ Le Message,”’ a story which, by the 
way, was much twisted about in its author’s hands, and under- 
went transformations too long to be summarized here. There 
is a point of irony in it which commends itself to its author, 
and which keeps it sweet and prevents it from sharing the 
mawkishness of the earlier stories. But it is slight. 

G.8; 








ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, 
Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. 


When we consider the amazing number of volumes 
written to ascertain the spot where Hannibal crossed 
the Alps, without our knowing to this day whether it 
was, as Whitaker and Rivaz say, by Lyons, Geneva, 
the Saint-Bernard, and the Valley of Aosta; or, as 
we are told by Letronne, Follard, Saint-Simon, and 
Fortia ad’ Urban, by the Isére, Grenoble, Saint-Bon- 
net, Mont Genévre, Fenestrella, and the Pass of 
Susa ; or, according to Larauza, by the Mont Cents 
and Susa; or, as Strabo, Polybius, and de Luc tell 
us, by the Rhone, Vienne, Yenne, and the Mont du 
Chat ; or, as certain clever people opine, by Genoa, la 
Bochetta, and la Scrivia—the view I hold, and which 
Napoleon had adopted—to say nothing of the vinegar 
with which some learned men have dressed the Alpine 
rocks, can we wonder, Monsieur le Marquis, to find 
modern history so much neglected that some most im- 
portant points remain obscure, and that the most odious 
calumnies still weigh on names which ought to be 
revered? And tt may be noted incidentally that by 
dint of explanations tt has become problematical 
whether Hannibal ever crossed the Alps at all. 
father Ménestrier believes that the Scoras spoken of 
by Polybius was the Saéne; Letronne, Larauza, and 
Schweighauser believe tt to be the Isére; Cochard, a 
learned man of Lyons, identifies it with the Drome. 
But, to any one who has eyes, are there not striking 


(1) 


2 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


geographical and linguistic affinities between Scoras 
and Scrivia, to say nothing of the almost certain fact 
that the Carthaginian fieet lay at la Speszia or in the 
Gulf of Genoa? 

1 could understand all this patient research tf the 
battle of Cannae could be doubted; but since tts con- 
sequences are well known, what ts the use of blackening 
so much paper with theories that are but the Arabesque 
of hypothesis, so to speak; while the most important 
history of later times, that of the Reformation, ts so 
Jull of obscurities that the name remains unknown of 
the man* who was making a boat move by steam at 
Barcelona at the time when Luther and Calvin 
were inventing the revolt of mind ? 

We, I believe, after having made, each in his own 
way, the same investigations as to the great and noble 
character of Catherine de’ Medici, have come to the 
same opinion. So I thought that my historical studies 
on the subject might be suitably dedicated to a writer 
who has labored so long on the history of the Refor- 
mation; and that I should thus do public homage, 
precious perhaps for its rarity, to the character and 
fidelity of a man true to the Monarchy. 


Paris, January, 1842. 


* The inventor of this experiment was probably Salomon of Caux, not 
of Caus. This great man was always unlucky; after his death even his 
name was misspelt. Salomon, whose original portrait, at the age of 
forty-six, was discovered by the author of the “‘ Human Comedy,” was 
born at Caux, in Normandy, 


INTRODUCTION. 


WHEN men of learning are struck by a historical blunder, 
and try to correct it, ‘‘ Paradox!’ is generally the cry; but 
to those who thoroughly examine the history of modern times, 
it is evident that historians are privileged liars, who lend their 
pen to popular beliefs, exactly as most of the newspapers of 
the day express nothing but the opinions of their readers. 

Historical independence of thought has been far less con- 
spicuous among lay writers than among the priesthood. 
The purest light thrown on history has come from the Bene- 
dictines, one of the glories of France—so long, that is to say, 
as the interests of the monastic orders are not in question. 
Since the middle of the eighteenth century, some great and 
learned controversialists have arisen who, ‘struck by the need 
for rectifying certain popular errors to which historians have 
lent credit, have published some remarkable works. Thus 
Monsieur Launoy, nicknamed the Evicter of Saints, made 
ruthless war on certain saints who have sneaked into the 
Church Calendar. Thus the rivals of the Benedictines, the 
too little known members of the Académie des Inscriptions 
et Belles-lettres, began their memoirs, their studious notes, 
full of patience, erudition, and logic, on certain obscure 
passages of history. Thus Voltaire, with an unfortunate bias 
and sadly perverted passions, often brought the light of his 
intellect to bear on historical prejudices. Diderot, with this 
end in view, began a book—much too long—on a period of 
the history of Imperial Rome. But for the French Revolu- 
tion, criticism, as applied to history, might perhaps have laid 
up the materials for a good and true history of France, for 
which evidence has long been amassed by the great French 
Benedictines. Louis XVI., a man of clear mind, himself 
translated the English work, which so much agitated the last 

(3) 


4 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


century, in which Walpole tried to explain the career of 
Richard ITI. 

How is it that persons so famous as kings and queens, so 
important as generals of great armies, become objects of 
aversion or derision? Half the world hesitates between the 
song on Marlborough and the history of England, as they do 
between popular tradition and history as concerning King 
Charles IX. 

At all the periods when great battles are fought between the 
masses and the authorities, the populace creates an ogresgue 
figure—to coin a word for the sake of its exactitude. Thus 
in our own time, but for the ‘‘ Memorials of Saint-Helena,”’ 
and the controversies of Royalists and Bonapartists, there 
was scarcely a chance but that Napoleon would have been 
misunderstood. Another Abbé de Pradt or two, a few more 
newspaper articles, and Napoleon from an Emperor would 
have become an ogre. 

How is error propagated and accredited ? The mystery is 
accomplished under our eyes without our discerning the pro- 
cess. No one suspects how greatly printing has-helped to 
give body both to the envy which attends persons in high 
places, and to the popular irony which sums up the converse 
view of every great historical fact. For instance, every bad 
horse in France that needs flogging is called after the Prince 
de Polignac; and so who knows what opinion the future may 
hold as to the Prince de Polignac’s coup d’ Etat? In conse- 
quence of a caprice of Shakespeare’s—a stroke of revenge, 
perhaps, like that of Beaumarchais on Bergasse (Begearss)— 
Falstaff, in England, is a type of the grotesque; his name 
raises a laugh, he is the King of Buffoons. Now, instead of 
being enormously fat, ridiculously amorous, vain, old, drunken, 
and a corrupter of youth, Falstaff was one of the most im- 
portant figures of his time, a Knight of the Garter, holding 
high command. At the date of Henry V.’s accession, Fal- 
staff was at most four-and-thirty. This general, who distin- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 5 


guished himself at the battle of Agincourt, where he took the 
Duc d’Alengon prisoner, in 1420 took the town of Montereau, 
which was stoutly defended. Finally, under Henry VI., he 
beat ten thousand Frenchmen with fifteen hundred men who 
were dropping with fatigue and hunger. So much for valor! 

If we turn to literature, Rabelais, among the French, a sober 
man whe drank nothing but water, is thought of as a lover of 
good-cheer and a persistent sot. Hundreds of absurd stories 
have been coined concerning the author of one of the finest 
books in French literature: ‘‘ Pantagruel.’’ 

Aretino, Titian’s friend, and the Voltaire of his day, is now 
credited with a reputation, in complete antagonism with his 
works and character, which he acquired by his over-free wit, 
characteristic of the writings of an age when gross jests were 
held in honor, and queens and cardinals indited tales which 
are now considered licentious. Instances might be infinitely 
multiplied. 

In France, and at the most important period of our history, 
Catherine de’ Medici has suffered more from popular error 
than any other woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Frédégonde ; 
while Marie de’ Medici, whose every action was prejudicial to 
France, has escaped the disgrace that should cover her name. 
Marie dissipated the treasure amassed by Henry IV.; she 
never purged herself of the suspicion that she was cognizant of 
his murder; Epernon, who had long known Ravaillac, and 
who did not parry his blow, was zw¢imate with the Queen ; she 
compelled her son to banish her from France, where she was 
fostering the rebellion of her other son, Gaston; and Riche- 
lieu’s triumph over her on the ‘‘ Journée des Dupes’”’ was due 
solely to the cardinal’s revealing to Louis XIII. certain doc- 
uments secreted after the death of Henry IV. 

Catherine de’ Medici, on the contrary, saved the throne of 
France, she maintained the Royal authority under circum- 
stances to which more than one great prince would have suc- 
cumbed. Face to face with such leaders of the factions and 


6 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


ambitions of the houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the two 
Cardinals de Lorraine and the two ‘‘ Balafrés,’’ the two 
Princes de Condé, Queen Jeanne d’Albret, Henri IV., the 
Connétable* de Montmorency, Calvin, the Colignys, and Thé- 
odore de Béze, she was forced to put forth the rarest fine 
qualities, the most essential gifts of statesmanship, under the 
fire of the Calvinist press. These, at any rate, are indisputable 
facts. And to the student who digs deep into the history of 
the sixteenth century in France the figure of Catherine de’ 
Medici stands out as that of a great king. 

When once calumnies are undermined by facts laboriously 
brought to light from under the contradictions of pamphlets 
and false anecdotes, everything is explained to the glory of 
this wonderful. woman, who had none of the weaknesses of her 
sex, who lived chaste in the midst of the gallantries of the most 
licentious Court in Europe, and who, notwithstanding her 
lack of money, erected noble buildings, as if to make good the 
losses caused by the destructive Calvinists, who injured art as 
deeply as they did the body politic. 

Hemmed in between a race of princes who proclaimed 
themselves the heirs of Charlemagne, and a factious younger 
branch that was eager to bury the Connétable de Bourbon’s 
treason under the throne ; obliged, too, to fight down a heresy 
on the verge of devouring the Monarchy, without friends, and 
aware of treachery in the chiefs of the Catholic party and of 
republicanism in the Calvinists, Catherine used the most dan- 
gerous but the surest of political weapons—Craft. She deter- 
mined to deceive by turns the party that was anxious to secure 
the downfall of the House of Valois, the Bourbons who aimed 
at the Crown, and the Reformers—the Radicals of that day, 
who dreamed of an impossible republic, like those of our own 
day, who, however, have nothing to reform. Indeed, so long 
as she lived, the Valois sat on the throne. The great de Thou 


* Constable ; at that time the highest military officer. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 7 


understood the worth of this woman when he exclaimed, on 
hearing of her death— 

‘Tt is not a woman, it is Royalty that dies in her!’’ 

Catherine had, in fact, the sense of Royalty in the highest 
degree, and she defended it with admirable courage and _per- 
sistency. ‘The reproaches flung at her by Calvinist writers 
are indeed her glory ; she earned them solely by her triumphs. 
And how was she to triumph but by cunning? Here lies the 
whole question. 

As to violence—that method beats on one of the most hotly 
disputed points of policy, which, in recent days, has been 
answered here, on the spot where a big stone from Egypt has 
been placed to wipe out the memory of regicide, and to stand 
as an emblem of the materialistic policy which now rules us ; 
it was answered at les Carmes and at the Abbaye; it was 
answered on the steps of Saint Roch ; it was answered in front 
of the Louvre in 1830, and again by the people against the 
King, as it has since been answered once more by la Fayette’s 
“best of all republics’’ against the republican rebellion, at 
Saint-Merri and the Rue Transnonnain. 

Every power, whether legitimate or illegitimate, must de- 
fend itself when it is attacked; but, strange to say, while the 
people are heroic when they triumph over the nobility, the au- 
thorities are murderers when they oppose the people! And, 
finally, if after their appeal to force they succumb, they are 
regarded as effete idiots. The present Government (1840) 
will try to save itself, by two laws, from the same evil as at- 
tacked Charles X., and which he tried to scotch by two de- 
crees, Is not this a bitter mockery? May those in power 
meet cunning with cunning? Ought they to kill those who 
try to kill them? 

The massacres of the Revolution are the reply to the mas- 
sacre of Saint-Bartholomew. The People, being King, did 
by the nobility and the King as the King and the nobility 
did by the rebeis in the sixteenth century. And popular 


8 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


writers, who know full well that, under similar conditions, the 
people would do the same again, are inexcusable when they 
blame Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX. 

‘©All power is a permanent conspiracy,’’ said Casimir 
Périer when teaching what power ought to be. We admire 
the anti-social maxims published by audacious writers; why, 
then, are social truths received in France with such disfavor 
when they are boldly stated? This question alone sufficiently 
accounts for historical mistakes. Apply the solution of this 
problem to the devastating doctrines which flatter popular 
passion, and to the conservative doctrines which would re- 
press the ferocious or foolish attempts of the populace, and 
you will see the reason why certain personages are popular or 
unpopular. Laubardemont and Laffemas, like some people 
now living, were devoted to the maintenance of the power 
they believed in. Soldiers and judges, they obeyed a Royal 
authority. D’Orthez, in our day, would be discharged from 
office for misinterpreting orders from the Ministry, but Charles 
X. left him to govern his province. The power of the masses 
is accountable to no one; the power of one is obliged to ac- 
count to its subjects, great and small alike. 

Catherine, like Philip II. and the Duke of Alva, like the 
Guises and Cardinal Granvelle, foresaw the future to which 
the Reformation was dooming Europe. They saw monarchies, 
religion, and power all overthrown. Catherine, from the 
Cabinet of the French kings, forthwith issued sentence of 
death on that inquiring spirit which threatened modern society 
—a sentence which Louis XIV. finally carried out. The 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes was a measure that proved 
unfortunate, simply in consequence of the irritation Louis 
XIV. had aroused in Europe. At any other time England, 
Holland, and the German Empire would not have encouraged 
on their territory French exiles and French rebels. 

Why, in these days, refuse to recognize the greatness which 
the majestic adversary of that most barren heresy derived 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 9 


from the struggle itself? Calvinists have written strongly 
against Charles IX.’s stratagems; but travel through France: 
as you see the ruins of so many destroyed fine churches, and 
consider the vast breaches made by religious fanatics in the 
social body; when you learn the revenges they took, while 
deploring the mischief of individualism—the plague of France 
to-day, of which the germ lay in the questions of liberty of 
conscience which they stirred up—you will ask yourself on 
which side were the barbarians. There are always, as Cath- 
erine says in the third part of this Study, ‘‘ unluckily, in all 
ages, hypocritical writers ready to bewail two hundred scoun- 
drels killed in due season.’’ Czesar, who tried to incite the 
Senate to pity for Catiline’s party, would very likely have 
conquered Cicero if he had had newspapers and an Opposition 
at his service. 

Another consideration accounts for Catherine’s historical 
and popular disfavor. In France the Opposition has always 
been Protestant, because its policy has never been anything 
but negative ; it has inherited the theories of the Lutherans, 
the Calvinists, and the Protestants on the terrible texts of 
liberty, tolerance, progress, and philanthropy. The opponents 
of power spent two centuries in establishing the very doubt- 
ful doctrine of freewill. ‘Two more centuries were spent 
in working out the first corollary of freewill—liberty of con- 
science. Our age is striving to prove the second—political 
liberty. 

Standing between the fields already traversed and the fields 
as yet untrodden, Catherine and the church proclaimed the 
salutary principle of modern communities: One faith, one 
Lord ; but asserting their right of life and death over all inno- 
vators. Even if she had been conquered, succeeding times 
have shown that Catherine was right. The outcome of free- 
will, religious liberty, and political liberty (mote, this ‘does 
not mean cévz/ liberty) is France as we now see it. 

And what is France in 1840? A country exclusively ab- 


10 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


sorbed in material interests, devoid of patriotism, devoid of 
conscience ; where authority is powerless; where electoral 
rights, the fruit of freewill and political liberty, raise none 
but mediocrities ; where brute force is necessary to oppose 
the violence of the populace ; where discussion, brought to 
bear on the smallest matter, checks every action of the body 
politic; and where individualism—the odious result of the 
indefinite subdivision of property, which destroys family cohe- 
sion—will devour everything, even the nation, which sheer 
selfishness will some day lay open to invasion. Men will 
say, ‘‘ Why not the Czar?’’ as they now say, ‘‘ Why not the 
Duc d’Orléans?’’ We do not care for many things even 
now; fifty years hence we shall care for nothing. 

Therefore, according to Catherine—and according to all 
who wish to see society soundly organized—man as a social 
unit, as a subject, has no freewill, has no right to accept the 
dogma of liberty of conscience, or to have political liberty. 
Sti]l, as no community can subsist without some guarantee 
given to the subject against the sovereign, the subject derives 
from that certain liberties under restrictions. Liberty—no ; 
but liberties—yes; well-defined and circumscribed liberties. 
This is in the nature of things. For instance, it is beyond 
human power to fetter freedom of thought ; and no sovereign 
may ever tamper with money. 

The great politicians who have failed in this long contest— 
it has gone on for five centuries—have allowed their subjects 
wide liberties ; but they never recognize their liberty to pub- 
lish anti-social opinions, nor the unlimited freedom of the 
subject. To them the words sudject and free are, politically 
speaking, a contradiction in terms; and, in the same way, 
the statement that all citizens are equal is pure nonsense and 
contradicted by nature every hour. To acknowledge the 
need for religion, the need for authority, and at the same 
time to leave all men at liberty to deny religion, to attack its 
services, to oppose the exercise of authority by the public and 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. ll 


published expression of opinion, is an impossibility such as 
the Catholics of the sixteenth century would have nothing to 
say to. Alas! the triumph of Calvinism will cost France ~ 
more yet than it has ever done; for the sects of to-day—re- 
ligious, political, “humanitarian, and leveling—are the train 
of Calvinism; and, when we see the blunders of those in 
power, their contempt for intelligence, their devotion to 
those material interests in which they seek support, and which 
are the most delusive of all props, unless by the special aid 
of providence, the genius of destruction must certainly win the 
day from the genius of conservatism. The attacking forces, 
who have nothing to lose and everything to win, are thor- 
oughly in agreement ; whereas their wealthy opponents refuse 
to make any sacrifice of money or of self-conceit to secure 
defenders. 

Printing came to the aid of the resistance inaugurated by 
the Vaudois and the Albigenses. As soon as human thought 
—no longer condensed, as it had necessarily been in order to 
preserve the most communicable form—had assumed a multi- 
tude of garbs and become the very people, instead of remain- 
ing in some sense divinely axiomatic, there were two vast 
armies to contend with—that of ideas and that of men. 
Royal power perished in the struggle, and we, in France, at 
this day are looking on at its last coalition with elements 
which make it difficult, not to say impossible. 

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No 
political action is possible when discussion is permanently 
established. So we ought to regard the woman as truly great 
who foresaw that future, and fought it so bravely. The 
House of Bourbon was able to succeed to the House of Valois, 
and owed it to Catherine de’ Medici that it found that crown 
to wear. If the second Balafré had been alive, it is very 
doubtful that the Béarnais, strong as he was, could have 
seized the throne, seeing how dearly it was sold by the Duc 
de Mayenne and the remnant of the Guise faction. The nec- 


12 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC, 


essary steps taken by Catherine, who had the deaths of Fran- 
cois II. and Charles IX. on her soul—both dying opportunely 
for her safety—are not, it must be noted, what the Calvinist 
and modern writers blame her for! ‘Though there was no 
poisoning, as some serious authors have asserted, there were 
other not less criminal plots. It is beyond question that she 
hindered Paré from saving one, and murdered the other mor- 
ally by inches. 

But the swift death of Frangois II. and the skillfully con- 
trived end of Charles IX. did no injury to Calvinist interests. 
The causes of these two events concerned only the uppermost 
sphere, and were never suspected by writers or by the lower 
orders at the time; they were guessed only by de Thou, by 
)’H6pital, by men of the highest talents, or the chiefs of the 
two parties who coveted and clung to the Crown, and who 
thought such means indispensable. 

Popular songs, strange to say, fell foul of Catherine’s mor- 
ality. The anecdote is known of a soldier who was roasting 
a goose in the guardroom of the Chateau de Tours while 
Catherine and Henry IV. were holding a conference there, 
and who sang a ballad in which the Queen was insultingly 
compared to the largest cannon in the hands of the Calvin- 
ists. Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and kill the man ; 
Catherine stopped him, and only shouted out— 

‘*Tt is Catherine who provides the goose! ’”’ 

Though the executions at Amboise were attributed to Cath- 
erine, and the Calvinists made that able woman responsible 
for all the inevitable disasters of the struggle, she must be 
judged by posterity, like Robespierre, at a future date. 

And Catherine was cruelly punished for her preference for 
the Duc d’Anjou, which made her hold her two elder sons 
so cheap. Henri III. having ceased, like all spoilt children, 
to care for his mother, rushed voluntarily into such debauch- 
ery as made him what the mother had made Charles IX., a 
childless husband, a king without an heir. Unhappily, Cath- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC1. 13 


erine’s youngest son, the Duc d’Alencon, died—a natural 
death. The Queen-mother made every effort to control her 
son’s passions. History preserves the tradition of a supper 
to nude women given in the banqueting-hall at Chenonceaux 
on his return from Poland, but it did not cure Henri III. of 
his bad habits. 

This great Queen’s last words summed up her policy, which 
was indeed so governed by good sense that we see the Cab- 
inets of every country putting it into practice in similar cir- 
cumstances. 

‘Well cut, my son,’’ said she, when Henri III. came to 
her, on her death-bed, to announce that the enemy of the 
throne had been put to death. ‘‘ Now you must sew up 
again.’’ 

She thus expressed her opinion that the sovereign must 
make friends with the House of Lorraine, and make it useful, 
as the only way to hinder the effects of the Guises’ hatred, 
by giving them a hope of circumventing the King. But this 
indefatigable cunning of the Italian and the woman was in- 
compatible with Henry III.’s life of debauchery. When once 
the Great Mother was dead, the Mother of Armies (Mater 
castrorum), the policy of the Valois died too. 


Before attempting to write this picture of manners in action, 
the author patiently and minutely studied the principal reigns 
of French history, the quarrels of the Burgundians and the 
Armagnacs, and those of the Guises and the Valois, each in 
the forefront of a century. His purpose was to write a pic- 
turesque history of France. Isabella of Bavaria, Catherine 
and Marie de’ Medici, each fills a conspicuous place, domi- 
nating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and 
leading up to Louis XIV. 

Of these three queens, Catherine was the most interesting 
and the most beautiful. Hers was a manly rule, not disgraced 
by the terrible amours of Isabella, nor those, even more ter- 


i4 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


rible though less known, of Marie de’ Medici. Isabella 
brought the English into France to oppose her son, was in 
love with her brother-in-law, the Duc d’Orléans, and with 
Boisbourdon. Marie de’ Medici’s account is still heavier. 
Neither of them had any political genius. 

In the course of these studies and comparisons, the author 
became convinced of Catherine’s greatness; by initiating 
himself into the peculiar difficulties of her position, he dis- 
cerned how unjust historians, biased by Protestantism, had 
been to this Queen; and the outcome was the three sketches 
here presented, in which some erroneous opinions of her, of 
those who were about her, and of the aspect of the times, 
are combated. 

The work is placed among my Philosophical Studies, be- 
cause it illustrates the spirit of a period, and plainly shows 
the influence of opinions. 

But, before depicting the political arena in which Cath- 
erine comes into collision with the two great obstacles in her 
career, it is necessary to give a short account of her previous 
life from the point of view of an impartial critic, so that the 
reader may form a general idea of this large and royal life 
up to the time when the first part of this narrative opens. 

Never at any period, in any country or in any ruling fam- 
ily, was there more contempt felt for legitimacy than by the 
famous race of the Medici (in French commonly written and 
pronounced Medicis). They held the same opinion of mon- 
archy as is now professed in Russia: the ruler on whom the 
crown devolves is the real and legitimate monarch. Mira- 
beau was justified in saying, ‘‘ There has been but one més- 
alliance in my family—that with the Medici;’’ for, notwith- 
standing the exertions of well-paid genealogists, it is certain 
that the Medici, till the time of Avérardo de’ Medici, gonfa- 
loniere of Florence in 1314, were no more than Florentine 
merchants of great wealth. The first personage of the family 
who filled a conspicuous place in the history of the great 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 15 


Tuscan Republic was Salvestro de’ Medici, gonfaloniere in 
1378. This Salvestro had two sons—Cosmo and Lorenzo de’ 
Medici. 

From Cosmo descended Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Duc 
de Nemours, the Duke of Urbino (Catherine’s father), Pope 
Leo X., Pope Clement VII., and Alessandro, not indeed 
Duke of Florence, as he is sometimes called, but Duke of the 
City of Penna, a title created by Pope Clement VII. as a step 
toward that of Grand Duke of Tuscany. 

Lorenzo’s descendants were Lorenzino—the Brutus of 
Florence—who killed Duke Alessandro; Cosmo, the first 
Grand Duke, and all the rulers of Florence till 1737, when 
the family became extinct. 

But neither of the two branches—that of Cosmo or that 
of Lorenzo—succeeded in a direct line, till the time when 
Marie de’ Medici’s father subjugated Tuscany, and the Grand 
Dukes inherited in regular succession. Thus Alessandro de’ 
Medici, who assumed the title of Duke of the City of Penna, 
and whom Lorenzino assassinated, was the son of the Duke 
of Urbino, Catherine’s father, by a Moorish slave. Hence 
Lorenzino, the legitimate son of Lorenzo, had a double right 
to kill Alessandro, both as a usurper in the family and as an 
oppressor of the city. Some historians have indeed supposed 
that Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The event 
that led to the recognition of this bastard as head of the 
Republic was his marriage with Margaret of Austria, the nat- 
ural daughter of Charles V. 

Francesco de’ Medici, the husband of Bianca Capello, rec- 
ognized as his son a child of low birth bought by that noto- 
rious Venetian lady ; and, strange to say, Fernando, succeed- 
ing Francesco, upheld the hypothetical rights of this boy. 
Indeed, this youth, known as Don Antonio de’ Medici, was 
recognized by the family during four ducal reigns; he won 
the affection of all, did them important service, and was 
universally regretted. 


16 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


Almost all the early Medici had natural children, whose 
lot was in every case splendid. The Cardinal Giulio de’ 
Medici, Pope Clement VII., was the illegitimate son of 
Giuliano I. Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici was also a bastard, 
and he was within an ace of being Pope and head of the 
family. 

Certain inventors of anecdote have a story that the Duke 
of Urbino, Catherine’s father, told her: ‘‘4 figla d’inganno 
non manca mat figliuolanza’’ (A clever woman can always have 
children, @ propos to some natural defect in Henri, the second 
son of Frangois I., to whom she was betrothed). This Lor- 
enzo de’ Medici, Catherine’s father, had married, for the 
second time, in 1518, Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, and 
died in 1519, a few days after his wife, who died in giving 
birth to Catherine. Catherine was thus fatherless and mother- 
less as soon as she saw the light. Hence the strange events 
of her childhood, checkered by the violent struggles of the 
Florentines, in the attempt to recover their liberty, against 
the Medici who were determined to govern Florence, but 
who were so circumspect in their policy that Catherine’s 
father took the title of Duke of Urbino. 

At his death, the legitimate head of the House of the 
Medici was Pope Leo X., who appointed Giuliano’s illegiti- 
mate son, Giulio de’ Medici, then cardinal, Governor of 
Florence. Leo X. was Catherine’s grand-uncle, and this 
Cardinal Giulio, afterward Clement VII., was her /ef/t-handed 
uncle only. This it was which made Brantéme so wittily 
speak of that Pope as an “‘ uncle in Our Lady.’’ 

During the siege by the Medici to regain possession of 
Florence, the Republican party, not satisfied with having shut 
up Catherine, then nine years old, in a convent, after strip- 
ping her of all her possessions, proposed to expose her to the 
fire of the artillery, between two battlements—the suggestion 
of a certain Battista Cei. Bernardo Castiglione went even 
further in a council held to determine on some conclusion to 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICZ. 17 


the business ; he advised that, rather than surrender Catherine 
to the Pope who demanded it, she should be handed over to 
the tender mercies of the soldiers. All revolutions of the 
populace are alike. Catherine’s policy, always in favor of 
Royal authority, may have been fostered by such scenes, 
which an Italian girl of nine could not fail to understand. 

Alessandro’s promotion, to which Clement VII., himself a 
bastard, largely contributed, was no doubt owing partly to 
the fact of his being illegitimate, and to Charles V.’s affec- 
tion for his famous natural daughter Margaret. Thus the 
Pope and the Emperor were moved by similar feelings. At 
this period Venice was mistress of the commerce of the 
world ; Rome governed its morals; Italy was still supreme, 
by the poets, the generals, and the statesmen who were her 
sons. At no other time has any one country had so curious 
or sO various a multitude of men of genius. There were so 
many that the smallest princelings were superior men. Italy 
was overflowing with talent, daring, science, poetry, wealth, 
and gallantry, though rent by constant internal wars, and at 
all times the arena in which conquerors met to fight for her 
fairest provinces. 

When men are so great they are not afraid to confess their 
weakness; hence, no doubt, this golden age for bastards. 
And it is but justice to declare that these illegitimate sons of 
the Medici were ardent for the glory and the advancement of 
the family, alike in possessions and in power. And as soon 
as the Duke of the City of Penna, the Moorish slave’s son, 
was established as Tyrant of Florence, he took up the interest 
shown by Pope Clement VII. for Lorenzo II.’s daughter, now 
eleven years of age. 

As we study the march of events and of men in that 
strange sixteenth century, we must never forget that the 
chief element of political conduct was unremitting craft, 
destroying in every nature the upright conduct, the sguare- 
ness which imagination looks for in eminent men. In this, 

2 


18 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


especially, lies Catherine’s absolution. This observation, in 
fact, disposes of all the mean and foolish accusations brought 
_ against her by the writers of the reformed faith. It was indeed 
the golden age of this type of policy, of which Machiavelli 
and Spinoza formulated the code, and Hobbes and Montes- 
quieu; for the Dialogue of ‘‘Sylla and Eucrates’’ expresses 
Montesquieu’s real mind, which he could not set forth in any 
other form in consequence of his connection with the Encylo- 
pedists. These principles are to this day the unconfessed 
morality of every Cabinet where schemes of vast dominion are 
worked out. In France we were severe on Napoleon when 
he exerted this Italian genius which was in his blood, and its 
plots did not always succeed; but Charles V., Catherine, 
Philip II., Giulio II., would have done just as he did in the 


affairs of Spain. 

At the time when Catherine was born, history, if related 
from the point of view of honesty, would seem an impossible 
romance. Charles V., while forced to uphold the Catholic 
Church against the attacks of Luther, who by threatening the 
tiara threatened his throne, allowed Rome to be besieged, and 
kept Pope Clement VII. in prison. This same Pope, who had 
no more bitter foe than Charles V., cringed to him that he 
might place Alessandro de’ Medici at Florence, and the 
Emperor gave his daughter in marriage to the bastard Duke. 
No sooner was he firmly settled there than Alessandro, in con- 
cert with the Pope, attempted to injure Charles V. by an 
alliance, through Catherine de’ Medici, with Francis I., and 
both promised to assist the French King to conquer Italy. 

Lorenzino de’ Medici became Alessandro’s boon companion, 
and pandered to him to get an opportunity of killing him; 
and Filippo Strozzi, one of the loftiest spirits of that age, re- 
garded this murder with such high esteem that he vowed that 
each of his sons should marry one of the assassin’s daughters. 
The sons religiously fulfilled the father’s pledge at a time when 
each of them, under Catherine’s protection, could have made 


ABOUL CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 1 


a splendid alliance ; for one was Doria’s rival, and the other 
Marshal of France. 

Cosmo de’ Medici, Alessandro’s successor, avenged the death 
of the tyrant with great cruelty, and persistently for twelve 
years, during which his hatred never flagged against the peo- 
ple who had, after all, placed him in power. He was eighteen 
years of age when he succeeded to the government; his first 
act was to annul the rights of Alessandro’s legitimate sons, at 
the time when he was avenging Alessandro! Charles V. con- 
firmed the dispossession of his grandson, and recognized Cosmo 
instead of Alessandro’s son. 

Cosmo, raised to the throne by Cardinal Cibo, at once sent 
the prelate into exile. Then Cardinal Cibo accused his crea- 
ture, Cosmo, the first Grand Duke, of having tried to poison 
Alessandro’sson. The Grand Duke, as jealous of his authority 
as Charles V. was of his, abdicated, like the Emperor, in favor 
of his son Francesco, after ordering the death of Don Garcias, 
his other son, in revenge for that of Cardinal Giovanni de’ 
‘Medici, whom Garcias had assassinated. 

Cosmo I. and his son Francesco, who ought to have been 
devoted, soul and body, to the Royal House of France, the 
only power able to lend them support, were the humble ser- 
vants of Charles V. and Philip II., and consequently the 
secret, perfidious, and cowardly foes of Catherine de’ Medici, 
one of the glories of their race. 

Such are the more important features—contradictory and 
illogical indeed—the dishonest acts, the dark intrigues of the 
House of the Medici alone. From this sketch some idea may 
be formed of the other princes of Italy and Europe. Every 
envoy from Cosmo I. to the Court of France had secret in- 
structions to poison Strozzi, Queen Catherine’s relation, when 
he should find him there. Charles V. had three ambassadors 
from Francis I. murdered. 


It was early in October, 1533, that the Duke della cittina? 


20 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Penna (of the City of Penna) left Florence for Leghorn, ac- 
companied by Catherine de’ Medici, sole heiress of Lorenzo 
II. The Duke and the Princess of Florence, for this was the 
title borne by the girl, now fourteen years of age, left the city 
with a large following of servants, officials, and secretaries, 
preceded by men-at-arms, and escorted by a mounted guard. 
The young princess as yet knew nothing of her fate, excepting 
that the Pope and Duke Alessandro were to have an interview 
at Leghorn; but her uncle, Filippo Strozzi, soon told her of 
the future that lay before her. 

Filippo Strozzi had married Clarissa de’ Medici, whole 
sister to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, Catherine’s 
father; but this union, arranged quite as much with a view to 
converting one of the stoutest champions of the popular cause 
to the support of Medici as to secure the recall of that then 
exiled family, never shook the tenets of the rough soldier who 
was persecuted by his party for having consented to it. In 
spite of some superficial change of conduct, somewhat over. 
ruled by this alliance, he remained faithful to the popular side, 
and declared against the Medici as soon as he perceived their 
scheme of subjugating Florence. This great man even refused 
the offer of a principality from Pope Leo X. At that time 
Filippo Strozzi was a victim to the policy of the Medici, so 
shifty in its means, so unvarying in its aim. 

After sharing the Pope’s misfortunes and captivity, when, 
surprised by Colonna, he took refuge in the castle of Saint- 
Angelo, he was given up by Clement VII. as a hostage and 
carried to Naples. As soon as the Pope was free, he fell upon 
his foes, and Strozzi was then near being killed; he was 
forced to pay an enormous bribe to get out of the prison, 
where he was closely guarded. As soon as he was at liberty, 
with the natural trustfulness of an honest man, he was simple 
enough to appear before Clement VII., who, perhaps, had flat- 
tered himself that he was rid of him. The Pope had so much 
to be ashamed of that he received Strozzi very ungraciously. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 21 


Thus Strozzi had very early begun his apprenticeship to the 
life of disaster, which is that of a man who is honest in poli- 
tics, and whose conscience will not lend itself to the caprices 
of opportunity, whose actions are pleasing only to virtue, 
which is persecuted by all—by the populace, because it with- 
stands their blind passions; by authority, because it resists its 
usurpations. 

The life of these great citizens is a martyrdom, through 
which they have nothing to support them but the strong voice 
of conscience, and the sense of social duty, which in all cases 
dictates their conduct. 

There were many such men in the Republic of Florence, 
all as great as Strozzi and as masterly as their adversaries on 
the Medici side, though beaten by Florentine cunning. In 
the conspiracy of the Pazzi, what can be finer than the atti- 
tude of the head of that house? His trade was immense, and 
he settled all his accounts with Asia, the Levant, and Europe 
before carrying out that great plot, to the end that his corre- 
spondents should not be the losers if he should fail. 

And the history of the rise of the Medici family in the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is one of the finest that re- 
mains unwritten, though men of great genius have attempted 
it. It is not the history of a republic, or of any particular 
community or phase of civilization ; it is the history of politi- 
cal man, and the eternal history of political developments, that 
of usurpers and conquerors. 

On his return to Florence, Filippo Strozzi restored the 
ancient form of government, and banished Ippolito de’ 
Medici, another bastard, as well as Alessandro, with whom he 
was now acting. But he was then afraid of the inconstancy 
of the populace ; and, as he dreaded Pope Clement’s venge- 
ance, he went to take charge of a large commercial house he 
had at Lyons in correspondence with his bankers at Venice 
and Rome, in France, and in Spain. A strange fact! These 
men, who bore the burden of public affairs as well as that of 


22 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. — 


a perennial struggle with the Medici, to say nothing of their 
squabbles with their own party, could also endure the cares 
of commerce and speculation, of banking with all its compli- 
cations, which the vast multiplicity of coinages and frequent 
forgeries made far more difficult then than now. The word 
banker is derived from the bench on which they sat, and 
which served also to ring the gold and silver pieces on. 
Strozzi found in his adored wife’s death a pretext to offer to the 
Republican party, whose police is always all the more terrible 
because everybody is a voluntary spy in the name of Liberty, 
which justifies all things. 

Filippo’s return to Florence happened just at the time when 
the city was compelled to bow to Alessandro’s yoke; but he 
had previously been to see Pope Clement, with whom matters 
were so promising that his feelings toward Strozzi had changed. 
In the moment of triumph the Medici so badly needed such a 
man as Strozzi, were it only to lend a grace to Alessandro’s 
assumption of dignity, that Clement persuaded him to sit on 
the bastard’s council, which was about to take oppressive 
measures, and Filippo had accepted a diploma as senator. 
But for the last two-years and a half—like Seneca and Burrhus 
with Nero—he had noted the beginnings of tyranny. He 
had found himself the object of distrust to the populace, and 
so little in favor with the Medici, whom he opposed, that he 
foresaw acatastrophe. And as soon ashe heard from Ales- 
sandro of the negotiations for the marriage of Catherine with 
a French Prince, which were, perhaps, to be concluded at 
Leghorn, where the contracting powers had agreed to meet, 
he resolved to go to France and follow the fortunes of his 
niece, who would need a guardian. Alessandro, delighted to 
be quit of a man so difficult to manage in what concerned 
Florence, applauded this decision, which spared him a murder, 
and advised Strozzi to place himself at the head of Catherine’s 
household. 

In point of fact, to dazzle the French Court, the Medici 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 23 


had constituted a brilliant suite for the young girl whom they 
quite incorrectly styled the Princess of Florence, and who was 
also called the Duchess of Urbino. ‘The procession, at the 
head of it Duke Alessandro, Catherine, and Strozzi, consisted 
of more than a thousand persons, exclusive of the escort and 
serving-men ; and when the last of them were still at the gate 
of Florence, the foremost had already got beyond the first 
village outside the town—where straw plait for hats is now 
made. 

It was beginning to be generally known that Catherine was 
to marry a son of Francis the First, but as yet it was no more 
than a rumor which found confirmation in the country from 
this triumphant progress from Florence to Leghorn. From 
the preparations required, Catherine suspected that her mar- 
riage was in question, and her uncle revealed to her the abor- 
tive scheme of her ambitious family, who had aspired to the 
_ hand of the Dauphin. Duke Alessandro still hoped that the 
Duke of Albany might succeed in changing the determination 
- of the French King, who, though anxious-to secure the aid of 
the Medici in Italy, would only give them the Duc d’Orléans. 
This narrowness lost Italy to France, and did not hinder Cath- 
erine from being Queen. 

This Duke of Albany, the son of Alexander Stewart, brother 
of James III.* of Scotland, had married Anne de la Tour de 
Boulogne, sister to Madeleine, Catherine’s mother; he was 
thus her maternal uncle. It was through her mother that 
Catherine was so rich and connected with so many families ; 
for, strangely enough, Diane de Poitiers, her rival, was also 
her cousin. Jean de Poitiers, Diane’s father, was the son 
of Jeanne de la Tour de Boulogne, the Duchess of Urbino’s 
aunt. Catherine was also related to Mary Stewart, her daugh- 
ter-in-law. 

Catherine was now informed that her dower in money 
would amount to a hundred thousand ducats. The ducat was 


* Great-uncle to Mary, Queen of Scots. 


24 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


a gold-piece as large as one of our old louis d’or, but only 
half as thick. Thus a hundred thousand ducats in those days 
represented, in consequence of the high value of gold, six 
millions of francs at the present time, the ducat being worth 
about twelve francs. The importance of the banking-house 
of Strozzi, at Lyons, may be imagined from this, as it was his 
factor there who paid over the twelve hundred thousand livres 
in gold. The counties of Auvergne and Lauraguais also 
formed part of Catherine’s portion, and the Pope, Clement 
VII., made her a gift of a hundred thousand ducats more in 
jewels, precious stones, and other wedding gifts, to which 
Duke Alessandro contributed. 

On reaching Leghorn, Catherine, still so young, must have 
been flattered by the extraordinary magnificence displayed by 
Pope Clement VII., her ‘‘ uncle in Our Lady,’ then the head 
of the House of Medici, to crush the Court of France. He 


had arrived at the port in one of his galleys hung with crimson 
satin trimmed with gold fringe, and covered with an awning 
of cloth of gold. This barge, of which the decorations had 
cost nearly twenty thousand ducats, contained several rooms 
for the use of Henri de France’s future bride, furnished with 
. the choicest curiosities the Medici had been able to collect. 
The oarsmen, magnificently dressed, and the seamen were 
under the captaincy of a prior of the order of the Knights of 
Rhodes. The Pope’s household filled three more barges. 

The Duke of Albany’s galleys, moored by the side of the 
Pope’s, formed, with these, a considerable flotilla. 

Duke Alessandro presented the officers of Catherine’s house- 
hold to the Pope, with whom he held a secret conference, 
introducing to him, as seems probable, Count Sebastian Mon- 
tecuculi, who had just left the Emperor’s service—rather 
suddenly, it was said—and the two generals, Antonio de 
Leyva and Fernando Gonzaga. Was there a premeditated 
plan between these two bastards to make the Duc d’Orléans 
the Dauphin? What was the reward promised to Count Se- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 25 


bastian Montecuculi, who, before entering the service of 
Charles V., had studied medicine? History issilent on these 
points, We shall see, indeed, in what obscurity the subject 
is wrapped. It is so great that some serious and conscientious 
historians have recently recognized Montecuculi’s innocence. 

Catherine was now officially informed by the Pope himself 
of the alliance proposed for her. The Duke of Albany had 
had great difficulty in keeping the King of France to his 
promise of giving even his second son to Catherine de’ 
Medici; and Clement’s impatience was so great, he was so 
much afraid of seeing his schemes upset either by some in- 
trigue on the part of the Emperor or by the haughtiness of 
France, where the great nobles cast an evil eye on this union, 
‘that he embarked forthwith and made for Marseilles. He ar- 
rived there at the end of October, 1533. 

In spite of this splendor, the House of the Medici was 
eclipsed by the sovereign of France. To show to what a pitch 
these great bankers carried their magnificence, the dozen 
pieces given by the Pope in the bride’s wedding purse con- 
sisted of gold medals of inestimable historical interest, for 
they were at that time unique. But Francis I., who loved 
festivity and display, distinguished himself on this occasion. 
The wedding feasts for Henri de Valois and Catherine went 
on for thirty-four days. It is useless to repeat here details 
which may be read in every history of Provence and Mar- 
seilles as to this famous meeting between the Pope and the 
King of France, which was the occasion of a jest of the Duke 
of Albany’s as to the duty of fasting; a retort recorded by 
Brantéme which vastly amused the Court, and shows the tone 
of manners at that time. 

Though Henri de Valois was but three weeks older than 
Catherine, the Pope insisted on the immediate consummation 
of the marriage between these two children, so greatly did he 
dread the subterfuges of diplomacy and the trickery commonly 
practiced at that period. Clement, indeed, very anxious for 


26 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


proof, remained thirty-four days at Marseilles, in the hope, it 
is said, of some visible evidence in his young relation, who at 
fourteen was marriageable. And it was, no doubt, when 
questioning Catherine before his departure, that he tried to 
console her by the famous speech ascribed to Catherine’s 
father: ‘“‘A jfigha d’inganno non manca mai la fighuo- 
lanza,’’ * 

The strangest conjectures have been given to the world as 
to the causes of Catherine’s barrenness during ten years. Few 
persons nowadays are aware that various medical works con- 
tain suppositions as to this matter, so grossly indecent that 
they could not be repeated.f This gives some clue to the 
strange calumnies which still blacken this Queen, whose every 
action was distorted to her injury. The reason lay simply 
with her husband. It is sufficient evidence that, at a time 
when no prince was shy of having natural children, Diane de 
Poitiers, far more highly favored than his wife, had no chil- 
dren; and nothing is commoner in surgical experience than 
such a malformation as this Prince’s, which gave rise to a 
jest of the ladies of the Court, who would have made him abbé 
of Saint-Victor, at a time when the French language was as 
free as the Latin tongue. After the Prince was operated on, 
Catherine had ten children. 

The delay was a happy thing for France. If Henri II. had 
had children by Diane de Poitiers, it would have caused seri- 
ous political complications. At the time of his treatment, 
the Duchesse de Valentinois was in the second youth of 
womanhood, These facts alone show that the history of 
Catherine de’ Medici remains to be entirely re-written ; and 
that, as Napoleon very shrewdly remarked, the history of 
France should be in one volume only, or in a thousand. 

When we compare the conduct of Charles V. with that of 
the King of France during the Pope’s stay at Marseilles, it is 
greatly to the advantage of Francis—as indeed in every in- 


* See page 16. ft See Bayle, Art. Herne, 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 27 


stance. Here isa brief report of this meeting as given by a 
contemporary : 

‘His Holiness the Pope, having been conducted to the 
Palace prepared for him, as I have said, outside the port, each 
one withdrew to his chamber until the morrow, when his said 

‘Holiness prepared to make his entry. Which was done with 

great sumptuousness and magnificence, he being set on a 
throne borne on the shoulders of two men in his pontifical 
habit, saving only the tiara, while before him went a white 
palfrey bearing the Holy Sacrament, the said palfrey being 
led by two men on foot in very fine raiment holding a bridle 
of white silk. After him came all the cardinals in their habit, 
riding their pontifical asses, and Madame the Duchess of 
Urbino in great magnificence, with a goodly company of 
ladies and gentlemen alike of France and of Italy. And the 
Pope, with all this company, being come to the place pre- 
pared where they should lodge, each one withdrew; and all 
this was ordered and done without any disorder or tumult. 
Now, while as the Pope was making his entry, the King 
crossed the water in his frigate and went to lodge there 
whence the Pope had come, to the end that on the morrow 
he might come from thence to pay homage to the Holy 
Father, as beseemed a most Christian King. 

‘‘ The King, being then ready, set forth to go to the Palace 
where the Pope was, accompanied by the Princes of his blood, 
Monsieur the Duc de Vendosmois (father of the Vidame de 
Chartres), the Comte de Saint-Pol, Monsieur de Montmor- 
ency, and Monsieur de la Roche-sur-Yon, the Duc de Nem- 
ours (brother to the Duke of Savoy who died at that place), 
the Duke of Albany, and many others, counts, barons, and 
nobles, the Duc de Montmorency being at all times about the 
King’s person. The King, being come to the Palace, was 
received by the Pope and all the College of Cardinals assem- 
bled in consistory, with much civility (fort humainement). 
This done, each one went to the place appointed to him, and 


8 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC. 


the King took with him many cardinals to feast them, and 
among them Cardinal de’ Medici, the Pope’s nephew, a very 
magnificent lord with a fine escort. On the morrow, those 
deputed by his Holiness and by the King began to treat of 
those matters whereon they had met to agree. First of all, 
they treated of the question of faith, and a bull was read for 
the repression of heresy, and to hinder things from coming to 
a greater combustion (une plus grande combustion) than they 
are in already. Then was performed the marriage ceremony 
between the Duc d’Orléans, the King’s second son, and 
Catherine de’ Medici, Duchess of Urbino, his Holiness’ niece, 
under conditions the same, or nearly the same, as had been 
formerly proposed to the Duke of Albany. The said marriage 
was concluded with great magnificence, and our Holy Father 
married them.* This marriage being thus concluded, the 
Holy Father held a consistory, wherein he created four cardi- 
nals to wait on the King, to wit: Cardinal le Veneur, here- 
tofore Bishop of Lisieux and High Almoner; Cardinal de 
Boulogne, of the family of la Chambre, half-brother on his 
mother’s side to the Duke of Albany; Cardinal de Chatillon, 
of the family of Coligny, nephew to the Sire de Montmorency ; 
and Cardinal de Givry.”’ 

When Strozzi paid down the marriage portion in the pres- 
ence of the Court, he observed some surprise on the part of 
the French nobles ; they said pretty loudly that it was a small 
price for such a mésalliance—what would they say to-day? 
Cardinal Ippolito replied— 

‘*Then you are not informed as to your King’s secrets. 
His holiness consents to bestow on France three pearls of 
inestimable price—Genoa, Milan, and Naples.”’ 

The Pope left Count Sebastian Montecuculi to present him- 
self at the French Court, where he made an offer of his 

* At that time in French, as in Italian, the words marry and espouse 


were used in a contrary sense to their present meaning. M/arier was the 
fact of being married, ésouser was the priestly function. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC] 29 


services, complaining of Antonio de Leyva and Fernando 
Gonzaga, for which reason he was accepted. Montecuculi 
was not one of Catherine’s household, which was composed 
entirely of French ladies and gentlemen; for, by a law of 
the realm which the Pope was rejoiced to see carried out, 
Catherine was naturalized by letters patent before her mar- 
riage. Montecuculi was at first attached to the household 
of the Queen, Charles V.’s sister. Then, not long after, 
he entered the Dauphin’s service in the capacity of cup- 
bearer. 

The Duchesse d’Orléans found herself entirely swamped at 
the Court of Francis I. Her young husband was in love with 
Diane de Poitiers, who was certainly her equal in point of 
birth, and a far greater lady. The daughter of the Medici 
took rank below Queen Eleanor, Charles V.’s sister, and the 
Duchesse d’Etampes, whose marriage to the head of the family 
of de Brosse had given her one of the most powerful posi- 
tions and highest titles in France. Her aunt, the Duchess of 
Albany, the Queen of Navarre, the Duchesse de Guise, the 
Duchesse de Vendéme, the wife of the Connétable, and many 
other women, by their birth and privileges as well as by their 
influence in the most sumptuous Court ever held by a French 
King—not excepting Louis XIV.—wholly eclipsed the daugh- 
ter of the Florentine merchants, who was indeed more illus- 
trious and richer through the Tour de Boulogne family than 
through her descent from the Medici. 

Filippo Strozzi, a republican at heart, regarded his niece’s 
position as so critical and difficult that he felt himself inca- 
pable of directing her in the midst of conflicting interests, 
and deserted her at the end of a year, being indeed recalled 
to Italy by the death of Clement VII. Catherine’s conduct, 
when we remember that she was but just fifteen, was a marvel 
of prudence. She very adroitly attached herself to the King, 
her father-in-law, leaving him as rarely as possible; she was 
with him on horseback, in hunting, and in war. 


30 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC1I. 


Her adoration of Francis I. saved the house of Medici from 
all suspicion when the Dauphin died poisoned. At that time 
Catherine and the Duc d’Orléans were at the King’s head- 
quarters in Provence, for France had already been invaded 
by Charles V., the King’s brother-in-law. The whole Court 
had remained on the scene of the wedding festivities, now 
the theatre of the most barbarous war. Just as Charles V., 
compelled to retreat, had fled, leaving the bones of his army 
in Provence, the Dauphin was returning to Lyons by the 
Rhone. Stopping at Tournon for the night, to amuse him- 
self, he went through some athletic exercises, such as formed 
almost the sole education he or his brother received, in con- 
sequence of their long detention as hostages. ‘The Prince 
being very hot—it was in the month of August—was so rash 
as to ask for a glass of water, which was given to him, iced, 
by Montecuculi. The Dauphin died almost instantaneously. 

The King idolized his son. The Dauphin was indeed, as 
historians are agreed, a very accomplished Prince. His father, 
in despair, gave the utmost publicity to the proceedings 
against Montecuculi, and placed the matter in the hands of 
the most learned judges of the day. 

After heroically enduring the first tests of torture without 
confessing anything, the Count made an avowal by which he 
fully implicated the Emperor and his two generals, Antonio 
de Leyva and Fernando Gonzago. This, however, did not 
satisfy Francis I. Never was a case more solemnly thrashed 
out than this. An eye-witness gives the following account of 
what the King did: 

‘¢ The King called all the Princes of the Blood, and all the 
Knights of his Order, and many other high personages of the 
realm, to meet at Lyons; the Pope’s Legate and Nuncio, the 
cardinals who were of his Court, and the ambassadors of 
England, Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Ferrara, and others ; 
together with all the princes and great nobles of foreign 
countries, both of Italy and of Germany, who were at that 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. a1 


time residing at his Court, to wit: The Duke of Wittemberg, 
in Allemaigne; the Dukes of Somma, of Arianna, and of 
Atria; the Princes of Melphe [Malfi?] (who had desired to 
marry Catherine), and of Stilliano, Neapolitan ; the Marquis 
di Vigevo, of the House of Trivulzio, Milanese ; the Signor 
Giovanni Paolo di Ceri, Roman; the Signor Césare Fregose, 
Genoese ; the Signor Annibale Gonzaga, Mantuan, and many 
more. Who being assembled, he caused to be read in their 
presence, from the beginning to the end, the trial of that 
wretched man who had poisoned his late Highness the 
Dauphin, with all the interrogations, confessions, confront- 
ings, and other proceedings usual in criminal trials, not choos- 
ing that the sentence should be carried out until all those 
present had given their opinion on this monstrous and miser- 
able matter.’’ 

Count Montecuculi’s fidelity and devotion may seem extra- 
ordinary in our day of universal indiscretion, when every- 
body, and even ministers, talk over the most trivial incidents 
in which they have put a finger; but in those times princes 
could command devoted servants, or knew how to choose 
them. There were monarchical Moreys then, because there 
was faith. Never look for great things from self-interest: 
interests may change; but look for anything from feeling, 
from religious faith, monarchical faith, patriotic faith. These 
three beliefs alone can produce a Berthereau of Geneva, a 
Sydney or a Strafford in England, assassins to murder 
Thomas a Becket, or a Montecuculi; Jacques Coeur and 
Jeanne d’Arc, or Richelieu and Danton; a Bonchamp, a 
Talmont, a Clément, or a Chabot. 

Charles V. made use of the highest personages to carry 
out the murder of three ambassadors from Francis I. A year 
later Lorenzino, Catherine’s cousin, assassinated Duke Ales- 
 sandro after three years of dissimulation and in circumstances 
which gained him the surname of the Florentine Brutus. The 
rank of the victim was so little a check on such undertakings 


32 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


that neither Leo X. nor Clement VII. seems to have died a 
natural death. Mariana, the historian of Philip II., almost 
jests in speaking of the death of the Queen of Spain, a 
Princess of France, saying that ‘‘ for the greater glory of the 
Spanish throne God suffered the blindness of the doctors who 
treated the Queen for dropsy.’? When King Henri II. 
allowed himself to utter a scandal which deserved a sword- 
thrust, he could find la Chataignerie willing to take it. At 
that time royal personages had their meals served to them in 
padlocked boxes of which they had the key. Hence the 
droit de cadenas, the right of the padlock, an honor which 
ceased to exist in the reign of Louis XIV. 

The Dauphin died of poison, the same perhaps as caused 
the death of MapaAME, under Louis XIV. Pope Clement 
had been dead two years; Duke Alessandro, steeped in de- 
bauchery, seemed to have no interest in the Duc d’Orléans’ 
elevation. Catherine, now seventeen years old, was with her 
father-in-law, whom she devotedly admired; Charles V. 
alone seemed to have an interest in the Dauphin’s death, 
because Francis I. intended his son to form an alliance which 
would have extended the power of France. Thus the Count’s 
confession was very ingeniously based on the passions and 
policy of the day. Charles V. had fled after seeing his troops 
overwhelmed in Provence, and with them his good fortune, 
his reputation, and his hopes of aggrandizement. And note 
that, even if an innocent man had confessed under torture, 
the King afterward gave him freedom of speech before an 
august assembly, and in the presence of men with whom in- 
nocence had a fair chance of a hearing. The King wanted 
the truth, and sought it in good faith. 

In spite of her now brilliant prospects, Catherine’s position 
at Court was unchanged by the Dauphin’s death; her child- 
lessness made a divorce seem probable when her husband 
should become king. The Dauphin was now enslaved by 
Diane de Poitiers, who dared to be the rival of Madame 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 33 


d’Etampes. Catherine was therefore doubly attentive and 
insinuating to her father-in-law, understanding that he was 
her sole mainstay. 

Thus the first ten years of Catherine’s married life were 
spent in the unceasing regrets caused by repeated disappoint- 
ments when she hoped to have a child, and the vexations of 
her rivalry with Diane. Imagine what the life must be of a 
princess constantly spied on by a jealous mistress who was 
favored by the Catholic party, and by the strong support the 
Sénéchale had acquired through the marriage of her daughters 
—one to Robert de la Mark, Duc de Bouillon, Prince de 
Sédan ; the other to Claude de Lorraine, Duc d’Aumale. 

Swamped between the party of the Duchesse d’Etampes 
and that of the Sénéchale (the title born by Diane de Poitiers 
during the reign of Francis I.), who divided the Court and 
political feeling between the two mortal foes, Catherine tried 
to be the friend of both the Duchess and Diane de Poitiers. 
She, who was to become so great a queen, played the part of a 

subaltern. Thus she served her apprenticeship to the double- 
faced policy which afterward was the secret clue to her life. 
At a later date the Queen found herself between the Catholics 
and the Calvinists, as the woman had been, for ten years, 
between Madame d’Etampes and Madame de Poitiers. 

She studied the contradictions of French policy. Francis 
upheld Calvin and the Lutherans to annoy Charles V. Then, 
after having covertly and patiently fostered the Reformation 
in Germany, after tolerating Calvin’s presence at the Court 
of Navarre, he turned against it with undisguised severity. So 
Catherine could see the Court and the women of the Court 
playing with the fire of heresy; Diane at the head of the 
Catholic party with the Guises, only because the Duchesse 
d’Etampes was on the side of Calvin and the Protestants. 

This was Catherine’s political education ; and in the King’s 
private circle she could study the mistakes made by the 
Medici. The Dauphin was antagonistic to his father on 

3 


34 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


every point; he was a bad son. He forgot the hardest but 
the truest axiom of Royalty, namely, that the throne is a 
responsible entity, and that a son who may oppose his father 
during his lifetime must carry out his policy on succeeding to 
the throne. Spinoza, who was as deep a politician as he was 
a great philosopher, says, in treating of the case of a king 
who has succeeded to another by a revolution or by treason: 
‘«If the new King hopes to secure his throne and protect his 
life, he must display so much zeal in avenging his predecessor’s 
death that no one shall feel tempted to repeat such a crime. 
But to avenge him worthily it is not enough that he should 
shed the blood of his subjects; he must confirm the maxims 
of him whose place he fills, and walk in the same ways of 
government.”’ 

It was the application of this principle which gave the 
Medici to Florence. Cosmo I., Alessandro’s successor, eleven 
years later, instigated the murder, at Venice, of the Florentine 
Brutus, and, as has been said, persecuted the Strozzi without 
mercy. It was the neglect of this principle that overthrew 
Louis XVI. That King was false to every principle of govern- 
ment when he reinstated the Parlements suppressed by his 
grandfather. Louis XV. had been clear-sighted ; the Parle- 
ments, and especially that of Paris, were quite half to blame 
for the disorders that necessitated the assembling of the States- 
General. Louis XV.’s mistake was that when he threw down 
that barrier between the throne and the people, he did not 
erect a stronger one, that he did not substitute for the Parle- 
ments a strong constitutional rule in the provinces. There 
lay the remedy for the evils of the Monarchy, the voting 
power for taxation and the incidence of the taxes, with con- 
sent gradually won to the reforms needed in the monarchical 
rule. 


Henri II.’s first act was to give all his confidence to the 
Connétable de Montmorency, whom his father had desired 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 35 


him to leave in banishment. The Connétable de Montmo- 
rency, with Diane de Poitiers, to whom he was closely at- 
tached, was master of the kingdom. Hence Catherine was 
even less powerful and happy as Queen of France than she had 
been as the Dauphiness. 

At first, from the year 1543, she had a child every year for 
ten years, and was fully taken up by her maternal functions 
during that time, which included the last years of Francis I.’s 
reign, and almost the whole of her husband’s. It is impos- 
sible not to detect in this constant child-bearing the malicious 
influence of a rival who thus kept the legitimate wife out of 
the way. This feminine and barbarous policy was no doubt 
one of Catherine’s grievances against Diane. Being thus 
kept out of the tide of affairs, this clever woman spent her time 
in observing all the interests of the persons at Court, and all 
the parties formed there. The Italians who had followed her 
excited violent suspicions. After the execution of Monte- 
cuculi, the Connétable de Montmorency, Diane, and most of 

‘the crafty politicians at Court were racked with doubts of the 
Medici; but Francis I. always scouted them. Still the 
Gondi, the Biraguas, the Strozzi, the Ruggieri, the Sardini, in 
short, all who were classed as the Italians who had arrived in 
Catherine’s wake, were compelled to exercise every faculty of 
wit, policy, and courage to enable them to remain at Court 
under the burden of disfavor that weighed on them. During 
the supremacy of Diane de Poitiers, Catherine’s obligingness 
went so far that some clever folk have seen in it an evidence 
of the profound dissimulation to which she was compelled by 
men and circumstances and by the conduct of Henri II. But 
it is going too far to say that she never asserted her rights as a 
wife and a queen. Her ten children (beside one miscarriage) 
were a sufficient explanation of the King’s conduct, who was 
thus set free to spend his time with Diane de Poitiers. But 
the King certainly never fell short of what he owed to him- 
self ; he gave the Queen an entry worthy of any that had pre- 


36 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, 


viously taken place, on the occasion of her coronation. The 
records of the Parlement and of the Exchequer prove that 
these two important bodies went to meet Catherine outside 
Paris, as far as Saint-Lazare. Here, indeed, is a passage from 
du Tillet’s narrative : 

‘¢ A scaffolding had been erected at Saint-Lazare, whereon 
was a throne (which du Tillet calls a chair of state, chaire de 
parement). Catherine seated herself on this, dressed in a sur- 
coat, or sort of cape of ermine, covered with jewels ; beneath 
it a bodice, with a court train, and on her head a crown of 
pearls and diamonds; she was supported by the Maréchale de 
la Mark, her lady of honor. Around her, standing, were the 
princes of the Blood and other princes and noblemen richly 
dressed, with the Chancellor of France in a robe of cloth of 
gold in a pattern on a ground of red cramoisy.* In front of 
the Queen and on the same scaffolding were seated, in two 
rows, twelve duchesses and countesses, dressed in surcoats of 
ermine, stomachers, trains, and fillets, that is to say, coronets, 
whether duchesses or countesses. There were the Duchesses 
d’Estouteville, de Montpensier—the elder and the younger— 
the Princesse de la Roche-sur-Yon ; the Duchesses de Guise, 
de Nivernois, d’Aumale, de Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers) ; 
Mademoiselle the legitimized bastard ‘of France’ (a title 
given to the King’s daughter Diane, who became Duchesse de 
Castro-Farnese, and afterward Duchesse de Montmorency- 
Damville), Madame la Connétable, and Mademoiselle de 
Nemours, not to mention the other ladies who could find no 
room. The four capped Presidents (@ mortier), with some 
other members of the Court and the chief clerk, du Tillet, 
went up on to the platform and did their service, and the 
First President Lizet, kneeling on one knee, addressed the 
Queen. The Chancellor, likewise on one knee, made re- 
sponse. She made her entrance into Paris at about three in 


* The old French word cvamoisi did not mean merely a crimson red, 
but denoted a special excellence of the dye. (See Rabelais.) 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 37 


the afternoon, riding in an open litter, Madame Marguerite 
de France sitting opposite to her, and by the side of the litter 
came the Cardinals d’Amboise, de Chatillon, de Boulogne, 
and de Lenoncourt, in their rochets. She got out at the 
Church of Notre-Dame, and was received by the clergy. 
After she had made her prayer, she was carried along the Rue 
de la Calandre to the Palace, where the royal supper was 
spread in the great hall. She sat there in the middle at a 
marble table, under a canopy of velvet powdered with gold 
fleurs de lys.’’ 

It will here be fitting to controvert a popular error which 
some persons have perpetuated, following Sauval in the mis- 
take. It has been said that Henri II. carried his oblivion of 
decency so far as to place his mistress’ initials even on the 
buildings which Catherine had advised him to undertake or 
to carry on at such lavish expense. But the cypher, which is 
to be seen at the Louvre, amply refutes those who have so 
little comprehension as to lend credit to such nonsense, a 
-gratuitous slur on the honor of our kings and queens. The 
H for Henri and the two Cs, face to face, for Catherine seem 
indeed to make two Ds for Diane; and this coincidence was 
no doubt pleasing to the King. But it is not the less certain 
that the royal cypher was officially constructed of the initials 
of the King and the Queen. And this is so true that the 
same cypher is still to be seen on the corn-market in Paris 
which Catherine herself had built. It may also be found in the 
crypt of Saint-Denis on Catherine’s tomb, which she caused to 
be constructed during her lifetime by the side of that of Henri 
II., and on which she is represented from life by the sculptor 
to whom she sat. 

On a solemn occasion, when he was setting out on an expe- 
dition to Germany, Henri II. proclaimed Catherine Regent 
during his absence, as also in the event of his death—on 
March 25, 1552. Catherine’s bitterest enemy, the author of 
the Discours mervetlleux sur les déportements de Catherine LT. 


38 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


(‘« Strange Discourses on the Conduct of Catherine II.’’), ad- 
mits that she acquitted herself of these functions to the general 
approbation, and that the King was satisfied with her adminis- 
tration. Henri II. had men and money at the right moment. 
And after the disastrous day of Saint-Quentin, Catherine ob- 
tained from the Parisians considerable sums, which she for- 
warded to Compiégne, whither the King had come. 

In politics Catherine made immense efforts to acquire some 
little influence. She was clever enough to gain over to her 
interests the Connétable de Montmorency, who was all-power- 
ful under Henri II. The King’s terrible reply to Montmor- 
ency’s insistency is well known. ‘This answer was the result of 
the good advice given by Catherine in the rare moments when 
she was alone with the King, and could explain to him the 
policy of the Florentines, which was to set the magnates of a 
kingdom by the ears and build up the sovereign authority on 
the ruins—Louis XI.’s system, subsequently carried out by 
Richelieu. Henri II., who saw only through the eyes of Diane 
and the Connétable, was quite a feudal King, and on friendly 
terms with the great Houses of the realm. 

After an ineffectual effort in her favor made by the Connét- 
able, probably in the year 1556, Catherine paid great court 
to the Guises, and schemed to detach them from Diane’s 
party so as to set them in opposition to Montmorency. But, 
unfortunately, Diane and the Connétable were as virulent 
against the Protestants as the Guises were. Hence their an- 
tagonism lacked the virus which religious feeling would have 
given it. Beside, Diane boldly defied the Queen’s plans by 
coquetting with the Guises and giving her daughter to the 
Duc d’Aumale. She went so far that she has been accused 
by some writers of granting more than smiles to the gallant 
Cardinal de Lorraine.* 


* Some satirist of the time has left the following lines on Henry II. [in 
which the pun on the words Sire and Cire (wax) would be lost in transla- 
tion] : 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 39 


The signs of grief and the ostentatious regret displayed by 
Catherine on the King’s death cannot be regarded as genuine. 
The fact that Henri II. had been so passionately and faithfully 
attached to Diane de Poitiers made it incumbent on Catherine 
that she should play the part of a neglected wife who idolized 
her husband; but, like every clever woman, she carried on 
her dissimulation, and never ceased to speak with tender 
regret of Henri II. Diane herself, it is well known, wore 
mourning all her life for her husband, Monsieur de Brézé. 
Her colors were black and white, and the King was wearing 
them at the tournament where he was fatally wounded. Cath- 
erine, in imitation no doubt of her rival, wore mourning for 
the King to the end of her life. 

On the King’s death, the Duchesse de. Valentintois was 
shamelessly deserted and dishonored by the Connétable de 
Montmorency, a man in every respect beneath his reputation. 
Diane sent to offer her estate and chateau of Chenonceaux to 
the Queen. Catherine then replied in the presence of wit- 
nesses, ‘‘I can never forget that she was all the joy of my 
dear Henri; I should be ashamed to accept, I will give her 
an estate in exchange. I would propose that of Chaumont- 
on-the-Loire.’? The deed of exchange was, in fact, signed at 
Blois in 1559. Diane, whose sons-in-law were the Duc d’Au- 
male and the Duc de Bouillon, kept her whole fortune and 
died peacefully in 1566 at the age of sixty-six. She was thus 
nineteen years older than Henri II. These dates, copied from 
the epitaph on her tomb by a historian who studied the 
question at the end of the last century, clear up many histori- 
cal difficulties ; for many writers have said she was forty when 


*¢ Sire, si vous laissez, comme Charles désire, 
Comme Diane veut, par trop vous gouverner, 
Fondre, pétrir, mollir, refondre, retourner, 

Sire, vous n’étes plus, vous n’étes plus que cire.” 


Charles was the Cardinal de Lorraine. 


40 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDIC. 


her father was sentenced in 1523, while others have said she 
was but sixteen. She was, in fact, four-and-twenty. 

After reading everything both for and against her conduct 
with Francis I., at the time when the House of Poitiers was 
in the greatest danger, we can neither confirm nor deny any- 
thing. It is a passage of history that still remains obscure. 
We can see by what happens in jour own day how history is 
falsified, as it were, in the making. 

Catherine, who founded great hopes on her rival’s age, 
several times made an attempt to overthrow her. On one oc- 
casion she was very near the accomplishment of her hopes. 
In 1554, Madame Diane, being ill, begged the King to go to 
Saint-Germain pending her recovery. This sovereign co- 
quette would not be seen in the midst of the paraphernalia of 
doctors, nor bereft of the adjuncts of dress. To receive the 
King on his return, Catherine arranged a splendid Ja/e?, in 
which five or six young ladies were to address him in verse. 
She selected for the purpose Miss Fleming, related to her 
uncle, the Duke of Albany, and one of the loveliest girls im- 
aginable, fair and golden-haired ; then a young connection of 
her own, Clarissa Strozzi, with magnificent black hair and 
rarely fine hands; Miss Lewiston, maid of honor to Mary 
Stewart ; Mary Stewart herself ; Madame Elisabeth de France, 
the unhappy Queen of Spain; and Madame Claude. Elisa- 
beth was nine years old, Claude eight, and Mary Stewart 
twelve. Obviously, the Queen aimed at showing off Clarissa 
Strozzi and Miss Fleming without other rivals in the King’s 
eyes. The King succumbed: he fell in love with Miss 
Fleming, and she bore him a son, Henri de Valois, Comte 
d’Angouléme, Grand Prior of France. 

But Diane’s influence and position remained unshaken. 
Like Madame de Pompadour later with Louis XV., the 
Duchesse de Valentinois was forgiving. But to what sort of 
love are we to ascribe this scheme on Catherine’s part? Love 
of power or love of her husband? Women must decide. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 41 | 


A great deal is said in these days as to the license of the 
press; but it is difficult to imagine to what a pitch it was car- 
ried when printing was a new thing. Aretino, the Voltaire 
of his time, as is well known, made monarchs tremble, and 
foremost of them all Charles V. But few people know, per- 
haps, how far the audacity of pamphleteers could go. This 
chateau of Chenonceaux had been given to Diane, nay, she 
was entreated to accept it, to induce her to overlook one of 
the most horrible publications ever hurled at a woman, one 
which shows how violent was the animosity between her and 
Madame d’Etampes. In 1537, when she was eight-and- 
thirty, a poet of Champagne, named Jean Voité, published a 
collection of Latin verses, and among them three epigrams 
aimed at her. We must conclude that the poet was under 
high patronage from the fact that his volume is introduced by 
an ex/ogium written by Simon Macrin, the King’s First Gentle- 
man of the Bedchamber. Here is the only passage quotable 
to-day from these epigrams, which bear the title: Jn Pic- 
taviam, anum aulicam. (Against da Pottiers, an old woman 
of the Court.) 


“Non trahit esca ficta preedam.” 


‘*A painted bait catches no game,”’ says the poet, after 
telling her that she paints her face and buys her teeth and 
hair; and he goes on: ‘‘Even if you could buy the finest 
essence that makes a woman, you would not get what you 
want of your lover, for you would need to be living, and you 
are dead.”’ 

This volume, printed by Simon de Colines, was dedicated 
‘“*To a Bishop!’’—To Francois Bohier, the brother of the 
man who, to save his credit at Court and atone for his crime, 
made an offering on the accession of Henri II. of the chateau 
of Chenonceaux, built by his father, Thomas Bohier, Coun- 
cilor of State under four Kings: Louis XI., Charles VIII., 
Louis XII., and Francis I. What were the pamphlets pub- 


42 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


lished against Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette 
in comparison with verses that might have been written by 
Martial! Vovité must have come to a bad end. Thus the 
estate and chateau of Chenonceaux cost Diane nothing but 
the forgiveness of an offense—a duty enjoined by the Gospel. 
Not being assessed by a jury, the penalties inflicted on the 
press were rather severer then than they are now. 

The widowed Queens of France were required to remain 
for forty days in the King’s bedchamber, seeing no light but 
that of the tapers; they might not come out till after the 
funeral. This inviolable custom annoyed Catherine greatly ; 
she was afraid of cabals. She found a way to evade it. The 
Cardinal de Lorraine coming out one morning—at such a 
time! at such a juncture!—from the house of ‘‘the Fair 
Roman,’’ a famous courtesan of that day, who lived in the 
Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, was roughly handled by a party 
of roisterers. ‘‘Whereat his holiness was much amazed,”’ 
says Henri Estienne, ‘‘ and gave it out that heretics were lying 
in wait for him.’’ And on this account the Court moved 
from Paris to Saint-Germain. The Queen would not leave 
the King her son behind, but took him with her. 

The accession of Francis II., the moment when Catherine 
proposed to seize the reins of power, was a disappointment 
that formed a cruel climax to the twenty-six years of endur- 
ance she had already spent at the French Court. The Guises, 
with incredible audacity, at once usurped the sovereign 
power. The Duc de Guise was placed in command of the 
army and the Connétable de Montmorency was shelved. 
The cardinal took the control of the finances and the clergy. 

Catherine’s political career opened with one of those 
dramas which, though it was less notorious than some others, 
was not the less horrible, and initiated her no doubt into the 
agitating shocks of her life. Whether it was that Catherine, 
after vainly trying the most violent remedies, had thought 
she might bring the King back to her through jealousy ; 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 48 


whether on coming to her second youth she had felt it hard 
never to have known love, she had shown a warm interest in 
a gentleman of royal blood, Frangois de Vendéme, son of 
Louis de Vend6me—the parent House of the Bourbons—the 
Vidame de Chartres, the name by which he is known to his- 
tory. Catherine’s covert hatred of Diane betrayed itself in 
many ways, which historians, studying only political devel- 
opments, have failed to note with due attention. Catherine’s 
attachment to the Vidame arose from an insult offered by the 
young man to the favorite. Diane looked for the most splen- 
did matches for her daughters, who were indeed of the best 
blood in the kingdom. Above all, she was ambitious of an 
alliance with the Royal family. And her second daughter, 
who became the Duchesse d’Aumale, was proposed in mar- 
riage to the Vidame, whom Francis I., with sage policy, kept 
in poverty. For, in fact, when the Vidame de Chartres and 
the Prince de Condé first came to Court, Francis I. gave 
them appointments! What? the office of chamberlains in 
ordinary, with twelve hundred crowns a year, as much as he 
bestowed on the humblest of his gentlemen. And yet, 
though Diane offered him immense wealth, some high office 
under the Crown, and the King’s personal favor, the Vidame 
refused. And then this Bourbon, factious as he was, married 
Jeanne, daughter of the Baron d’Estissac, by whom he had 
no children. 

This proud demeanor naturally commended the Vidame to 
Catherine, who received him with marked favor, and made 
him her devoted friend. Historians have compared the last 
Duc de Montmorency, who was beheaded at Toulouse, with 
the Vidame de Chartres for his power of charming, his 
merits, and his talents. 

Henri II. was not jealous; he did not apparently think it 
possible that a Queen of France could fail in her duty, or 
that a Medici could forget the honor done her by a Valois. 
When the Queen was said to be flirting with the Vidame de 


44 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Chartres, she had been almost deserted by the King since the 
birth of her last child. So this attempt came to nothing—as 
the King died wearing the colors of Diane de Poitiers. 

So, at the King’s death, Catherine was on terms of gallant 
familiarity with the Vidame, a state of things in no way out 
of harmony with the manners of the time, when love was at 
once so chivalrous and so licentious that the finest actions 
seemed as natural as the most blamable. But, as usual, 
historians have blundered by regarding exceptional cases as 
the rule. 

Henri II.’s four sons nullified every pretension of the 
Bourbons, who were all miserably poor, and crushed under 
the scorn brought upon them by the Connétable de Montmor- 
ency’s treason, in spite of the reasons which had led him to 
quit the country. ‘The Vidame de Chartres, who was to the 
Prince de Condé what Richelieu was to Mazarin, a father in 
politics, a model, and yet more a master in gallantry, hid the 
vast ambition of his family under a semblance of levity. 
Being unable to contend with the Guises, the Montmorencys, 
the Princes of Scotland, the cardinals, and the Bouillons, he 
aimed at distinction by his gracious manners, his elegance, 
and his wit, which won him the favors of the most charming 
women, and the hearts of many he never thought about. He 
was a man privileged by nature, whose fascinations were irre- 
sistible, and who owed to his love affairs the means of keeping 
up his rank. The Bourbons would not have taken offense, 
like Jarnac, at la Chataignerie’s scandal ; they were very ready 
to accept lands and houses from their mistresses—witness the 
Prince de Condé, who had the estate of Saint-Valery from 
Madame la Maréchale de Saint-André. 

During the first twenty days of mourning for Henri II., a 
sudden change came over the Vidame’s prospects. Courted 
by the Queen-mother, and courting her as a man may court 
a queen, in the utmost secrecy, he seemed fated to play an 
important part; and Catherine, in fact, resolved to make him 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 45 


useful. The Prince received letters from her to the Prince 
de Condé, in which she pointed out the necessity for a coali- 
tion against the Guises. The Guises, informed of this in- 
trigue, made their way into the Queen’s chamber to compel 
her to sign an order consigning the Vidame to the Bastille, 
and Catherine found herself under the cruel necessity of sub- 
mitting. The Vidame died after a few months’ captivity, on 
the day when he came out of prison, a short time before the 
Amboise conspiracy. 

This was the end of Catherine de’ Medici’s first and only 
love affair. Protestant writers declare that the Queen had 
had him poisoned to bury the secret of her gallantries in the 
tomb. 

Such was this woman’s apprenticeship to the exercise of 
royal power. 





PART I. 


THE CALVINIST MARTYR. 


Few persons in these days know how artless were the dwell- 
ings of the citizens of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how 
simple their lives. This very simplicity of habits and thought, 
perhaps, was the cause of the greatness of this primitive citizen 
class—for they were certainly great, free, and noble ; more so, 
perhaps, than the citizens of our time. Their history remains 
to be written ; it requires and awaits a man of genius. Inspired 
by an incident which, though little known, forms the basis of 
this narrative, and is one of the most remarkable in the his- 
tory of the citizen class, this reflection will no doubt occur to 
every one who shall read it to the end. Is it the first time in 
history that the conclusion has come before the facts ? 

In 1560, the houses of the Rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie (old 
furrieries) lay close to the left bank of the Seine, between the 
Notre-Dame Bridge and the bridge to the Exchange. The 
public way and the houses occupied the ground now given up 
to the single path of the present quay. Each house, rising 
from the river, had a way down to it by stone or wooden steps, 
defended by strong iron gates or doors of nail-studded timber. 
These houses, like those of Venice, had a door to the land and 
one to the water. At the moment of writing this sketch, only 
one house remains of this kind as a reminiscence of old Paris, 
and that is doomed soon to disappear ; it stands at the corner 
of the Petit-Pont, the “tle bridge facing the guard-house of the 
H6tel-Dieu. 

Of old each dwelling presented, on the river-side, the pecu- 
liar physiognomy stamped on it either by the trade and the 
habits of its owners, or by the eccentricity of the construc- 
tions devised by them for utilizing or defiling the Seine, The 

(46) 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 47 


bridges being built, and almost all choked up by more mills 
than were convenient for the requirements of navigation, the 
Seine in Paris was divided into as many pools as there were 
bridges. Some of these old Paris basins would have afforded 
delightful studies of color for the painter. What a forest of 
timbers was built into the cross-beams that supported the mills, 
with their immense sails and wheels! What curious effects 
were to be found in the joists that shored up the houses from 
the river. Genre painting as yet, unfortunately, was not, and 
engraving in its infancy; so we have no record of the curious 
scenes which may still be found, on a small scale, in some 
provincial towns where the rivers are fringed with wooden 
houses, and where, as at Vendéme, for instance, the pools, 
overgrown with tall grasses, are divided by railings to separate 
the various properties on each bank. 

The name of this street, which has now vanished from the 
map, sufficiently indicates the kind of business carried on 
there. At that time the merchants engaged in any particular 
trade, far from dispersing themselves about the city, gathered 
together for mutual protection. Being socially bound by the 
guild which limited their increase, they were also united intoa 
brotherhood by the church. This kept up prices. And then 
the masters were not at the mercy of their workmen and did 
not yield, as they do now, to all their vagaries ; on the con- 
trary, they took charge of them, treated them as their children, 
and taught them the finer mysteries of their craft. A work- 
man, to become a master, was required to produce a master- 
piece—always an offering: to the patron saint of the guild. 
And will you venture to assert that the absence of competition 
"ale their sense of perfection or hindered beauty of 

orkmanship, when your admiration of the work of the older 
craftsmen has created the new trade of dealers in dric-a-brac ? 

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the fur trade was 
one of the most flourishing industries. The difficulty of 
obtaining furs, which, coming from the North, necessitated 


48 ‘ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


long and dangerous voyages, gave a high value to skins and 
furriers’ work. Then, as now, high prices led to demand, 
for vanity knows no obstacles. 

In France, and in other kingdoms, not only was the use of 
furs restricted by law to the great nobility, as is proved by 
the part played by ermine in ancient coats-of-arms; but 
certain rare furs, such as vair, which was beyond doubt im- 
perial sable, might be worn only by kings, dukes, and men 
of high rank holding certain offices. Vacr (a name still used 
in heraldry, vazr and counter vair) was subdivided into grand 
vair and menu vair. The word has within the last hundred 
years fallen so completely into disuse, that in hundreds of 
editions of Perrault’s fairy tales, Cinderella’s famous slipper, 
probably of fur, menu vair, has become a glass slipper, 
pantoufle de verre. Not long since a distinguished French 
poet was obliged to restore and explain the original spelling 
of this word, for the edification of his brethren of the press, 
when giving an account of the ‘‘ Cenerentola,’’ in which a 
ring is substituted for the symbolical slipper—an unmeaning 
change. 

The laws against the use of fur were, of course, perpetually 
transgressed, to the great advantage of the furriers. The 
high price of textiles and of furs made a garment in those days 
a durable thing, in keeping with the furniture, armor, and 
general details of the sturdy life of the time. A nobleman 
or lady, every rich man as well as every citizen, possessed at 
most two dresses for each season, and they lasted a lifetime 
ormore. ‘These articles were bequeathed to their children. 
Indeed, the clauses relating to weapons and raiment in 
marriage-contracts, in these days unimportant by reason of 
the small value of clothes that are constantly renewed, were 
at that period of great interest. High prices had led to 
durability. 

A lady’s outfit represented a vast sum of money; it was 
included in her fortune, and safely bestowed in those enor- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 49 


mous chests which endanger the ceilings of modern houses. 
The full dress of a lady in 1840 would have been the dis- 
habille of a fine lady of 1540. The discovery of America, 
the facility of transport, the destruction of social distinctions, 
which has led to the effacement of visible distinctions, have 
all contributed to reduce the furrier’s craft to the low ebb at 
which it stands, almost to nothing. The article sold by a 
furrier at the same price as of old—say twenty livres—has fallen 
in value with the money: the livre or franc was then worth 
twenty of our present money. The citizen’s wife or the 
courtesan who, in our day, trims her cloak with sable, does 
not know that in 1440 a malignant constable of the watch 
would have taken her forthwith into custody, and hailed her 
before the judge at le Chatelet. The English ladies who are 
so fond of ermine are unconscious of the fact that formerly 
none but queens, duchesses, and the Chancellor of France 
were permitted to wear this royal fur. There are at this 
day various ennobled families bearing the name of Pelletier 
or Lepelletier, whose forebears were obviously wealthy furriers ; 
for most of our citizen names were originally surnames of that 
kind. 


This digression not only explains the long squabbles as to 
precedence which the Drapers’ Guild carried on for two cen- 
turies with the Mercers and the Furriers, each insisting on 
marching first, as being the most important, but also accounts 
for the consequence of one Master Lecamus, a furrier honored 
with the patronage of the two Queens, Catherine de’ Medici 
and Mary Stewart, as well as that of the legal profession, who 
for twenty years had been the Syndic of his corporation, and 
who lived in this street. The house occupied by Lecamus 
was one of the three forming the three corners of the cross- 
roads at the end of the bridge to the Exchange, where only 
the tower now remains that formed the fourth corner. At 
the angle this house, forming the corner of the bridge and 

4 


50 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


of the quay, now called the Quai aux Fleurs, the architect 
had placed a niche for a Madonna, before whom tapers con- 
stantly burned, with posies of real flowers in their season and 
artificial flowers in the winter. 

On the side toward the Rue du Pont, as well as on that to 
the Rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, the house was supported on 
wooden pillars. All the houses of the trading quarters were 
thus constructed, with an arcade beneath, where foot passen- 
gers walked under cover on a floor hardened by the mud they 
brought in, which made it a rather rough pavement. — In all 
the towns of France these arcades have been called pi/vers—in 
England vows—a general term to which the name of a trade 
is commonly added, as ‘‘ Piliers des Halles,’’ ‘‘ Piliers de la 
Boucherie.’’ ‘These covered ways, required by the change- 
able and rainy climate of Paris, gave the town a highly char- 
acteristic feature, but they have entirely disappeared. Just 
as there now remains one house only on the river bank, so no 
more than about a hundred feet are left of the old frlers in 
the market, the last that have survived until now; and in a 
few days this remnant of the gloomy labyrinth of old Paris will 
also be destroyed. The existence of these relics of the Middle 
Ages is, no doubt, incompatible with the splendor of modern 
Paris. And these remarks are not intended as a lament over 
those fragments of the old city, but as a verification of this 
picture by the last surviving examples now falling into dust, 
and to win forgiveness for such descriptions, which will be 
precious in the future which is following hard on the heels of 
this age. 

The walls were of timber covered with slates. The spaces 
between the timbers had been filled up with bricks, in a way 
that may still be seen in some provincial towns, laid in a 
zigzag pattern known as Point de Hongrie. The window-sills 
and lintels, also of wood, were handsomely carved, as were 
the corner tabernacle above the Madonna, and the pillars in 
front of the store. Every window, every beam dividing the | 


; ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 51 


stories, was graced with arabesques of fantastic figures and 
animals wreathed in scrolls of foliage. On the street-side, as 
on the river-side, the house was crowned with a high-pitched 
roof having a gable to the river and one to the street. This 
roof, like that of a Swiss chalet, projected far enough to cover 
a balcony on the third floor with an ornamental balustrade; 
here the mistress might walk under shelter and command a 
_ view of the street, or of the pool shut in between two bridges 
and two rows of houses. 

Houses by the river were at that time highly valued. The 
system of drainage and water-supply was not yet invented ; 
the only main drain was one around Paris, constructed by 
Aubriot, the first man of genius and determination who—in 
the time of Charles V.—thought of sanitation for Paris. 
Houses situated like this of the Sieur Lecamus found in the 
river a necessary water-supply, and a natural outlet for rain- 
water and waste. The vast works of this kind under the 
direction of the Trade Provosts are only now disappearing. 
None but octogenarians can still remember having seen the 
pits which swallowed up the surface-waters, in the Rue Mont- 
martre, Rue du Temple, etc. These hideous yawning culverts 
were in their day of inestimable utility. Their place will 
probably be for ever marked by the sudden rising of the road- 
way over what was their open channel—another archzological 
detail which, in a couple of centuries, the historian will find 
inexplicable. 

One day, in 1816, a little girl, who had been sent to an 
actress at the Ambigu with some diamonds for the part of a 
queen, was caught in a storm, and so irresistibly swept away 
by the waters to the opening of the drain in the Rue du 
Temple, that she would have been drowned in it but for 
the help of a passer-by, who was touched by her cries. But 
she had dropped the jewels, which were found in a man-hole. 
This accident made a great commotion and gave weight to 
the demands for the closing of these gulfs for swallowing 


52 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


water and little girls. These curious structures, five feet high, 
had more or less movable gratings, which led to the flooding 
of cellars when the stream produced by heavy rain was 
checked by the grating being choked with rubbish, which the 
residents often forgot to remove. 

The front of Master Lecamus’ store was a large window, 
but filled in with small panes of leaded glass, which made 
the place very dark. The furs for wealthy purchasers were 
carried to them for inspection. ‘To those who came to buy 
in the store, the goods were displayed outside between the 
pillars, which, during the day, were always more or less 
blocked by tables and salesmen sitting on stools, as they 
could still be seen doing under the arcade of the Halles some 
fifteen years since. From these outposts the clerks, appren- 
tices, and sewing girls could chat, question, and answer each 
other, and hail the passer-by in a way which Walter Scott 
has depicted in the ‘“ Fortunés of Nigel.’’ The signboard, 
representing an ermine, was hung out as we still see those of 
village inns, swinging from a handsome arm of pierced and 
gilt ironwork. Over the ermine were these words: 


LECAMUS 


FURRIER 


To Her MAjEsTy THE QUEEN AND THE KING OUR 
SOVEREIGN LORD 


On one side, and on the other: 


To Her Majesty THE QUEEN-MOTHER 
AND TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE PARLEMENT. 


The words ‘‘ To Her Majesty the Queen’’ had been lately 
added ; the gilt letters were new. This addition was a conse- 
quence of the recent changes produced by Henri II.’s sudden 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 53 


and violent death, which overthrew many fortunes at Court 
and began that of the Guises. 

The back store looked over the river. In this room sat 
the worthy citizen and his wife, Mademoiselle Lecamus. The 
wife of a man who was not noble had not at that time any 
tight to the title of Dame, or lady ; but the wives of the cit- 
izens of Paris were allowed to call themselves Demoiselle (as 
we might say Mistress), as part of the privileges granted and 
confirmed to their husbands by many kings to whom they had 
rendered great services. Between this back room and the 
front store was a spiral ladder or staircase of wood, a sort of 
corkscrew leading up to the next story, where the furs were 
stored, to the old couple’s bedroom, and again to the attics, 
lighted by dormer windows, where their children slept, the 
maidservant, the clerks, and the apprentices. 

This herding of families, servants, and apprentices, and the 
small space allotted to each in the dwelling, where the ap- 
-prentices all slept in one large room under the tiles, accounts 
for the enormous population at that time crowded together in 
Paris on a tenth of the ground now occupied by the city, and 
also for the many curious details of medieval life, and the 
cunning love affairs, though these, pace the grave historian, 
are nowhere recorded but by the story-writers, and without 
them would have been lost. 

At this time a grand gentleman—such as the Admiral de 
Coligny, for instance—had three rooms for himself in Paris, 
and his people lived in a neighboring hostelry. There were 
not fifty mansions in all Paris, not fifty palaces, that is to say, 
belonging to the sovereign princes or great vassals, whose 
existence was far superior to that of the greatest German 
rulers, such as the Duke of Bavaria or the Elector of Saxony. 

The kitchen in the Lecamus’ house was on the river-side 
below the back store. It had a glass door opening on to an 
ironwork balcony, where the cook could stand to draw up 
water in a pail and to wash the household linen. Thus the 


54 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


back store was at once the sitting-room, the dining-room, and 
the counting-house. It was in this important room—always 
fitted with richly carved wood and adorned by some chest 
or artistic article of furniture—that the merchant spent most 
of his life ; there he had jolly suppers after his day’s work ; 
there were held secret debates on the political interests of the 
citizens and the Royal family. The formidable guilds of 
Paris could at that time arm a hundred thousand men. ‘Their 
resolutions were stoutly upheld by their serving-men, their 
clerks, their apprentices, and their workmen. ‘Their provost 
was their commander-in-chief, and they had, in the Hotel de 
Ville, a palace where they had a right to assemble. 

In that famous ‘‘ citizens’ parlor ’’ (parlouer aux bourgeois) 
very solemn decisions were taken. But for the continual sac- 
rifices which had made war unendurable to the guilds, wearied 
out with losses and famine, Henri IV., a rebel-made king, 
might never have entered Paris. 

Every reader may now imagine for himself the characteristic 
appearance of this corner of Paris where the bridge and the 
quay now open out, where the trees rise from the Quai aux 
Fleurs, and where nothing is left of the past but the lofty and 
famous clock-tower whence the signal was tolled for the mas- 
sacre of Saint-Bartholomew. Strange coincidence! One of 
the houses built round the foot of that tower—at that time 
surrounded by wooden stores—the house of the Lecamus, was 
to be the scene of one of the incidents that led to that night 
of horrors, which proved, unfortunately, propitious rather than 
fatal to Calvinism. 


At the moment when this story begins, the audacity of the 
new religious teaching was setting Paris by the ears. A 
Scotchman, named Stewart, had just assassinated President 
Minard, that member of the Parlement to whom public opin- 
ion attributed a principal share in the execution of Anne du 
Bourg, a councilor burnt on the Place de Gréve after the 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 55 


tailor of the late King, who had been tortured in the presence 
of Henry II. and Diane de Poitiers. Paris was so closely 
watched that the archers on guard compelled every passer-by 
to pray to the Virgin, in order to detect heretics, who yielded 
unwillingly, or even refused to perform an act opposed to their 
convictions. 

The two archers on guard at the corner of the Lecamus’ 
house had just gone off duty; thus Christophe, the furrier’s 
son, strongly suspected of deserting the Catholic faith, had 
been able to go out without fear of being compelled to adore 
the Virgin’s image. At seven in the evening of an April day, 
1560, night was falling, and the apprentices, seeing only a 
few persons walking along the arcades on each side of the 
street, were carrying in the goods laid out for inspection 
preparatory to closing the house and the store. Christophe 
Lecamus, an ardent youth of two-and-twenty, was standing in 
the door, apparently engaged in looking after the apprentices. 

‘Monsieur,’ said one of these lads to Christophe, pointing 


out a man who was pacing two and fro under the arcade with 


a doubtful expression, ‘‘ that is probably a spy or a thief, but 
whatever he is, such a lean wretch cannot be an honest man. 
If he wanted to speak to us on business, he would come up 
boldly instead of creeping up and down as he is doing. And 
what a face!’’ he went on, mimicking the stranger, ‘‘ with 
his nose hidden in his cloak! What a jaundiced eye, and 
what a starved complexion !”’ 

As soon as the stranger thus described saw Christophe stand- 
ing alone in the doorway, he hastily crossed from the opposite 
arcade where he was walking, came under the pillars of the 
Lecamus’ house, and, passing along by the store before the 
apprentices had come out again to close the shutters, he went 
up to the young man. 

‘*T am Chaudieu!’’ he said in a low voice. 

On hearing the name of one of the most famous ministers, 
and one of the most heroic actors in the terrible drama called 


56 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


the Reformation, Christophe felt such a thrill as a faithful 
peasant would have felt on recognizing his King under a dis- 
guise. 

‘‘Would you like to see some’ furs? ’’ said Christophe, to 
deceive the apprentices whom he heard behind him. ‘Though 
it is almost dark, I can show you some myself.”’ 

He invited the minister to enter, but the man replied that 
he would rather speak to him out of doors. Christophe fetched 
his cap and followed the Calvinist. 

Chaudieu, though banished by an edict, as secret plenipo- 
tentiary of Théodore de Béze and Calvin—who directed the 
Reformation in France from Geneva—went and came, defying 
the risk of the horrible death inflicted by the Parlement, in 
concert with the church and the monarch, on a leading re- 
former, the famous Anne du Bourg. This man, whose brother 
was a Captain in the army and one of Admiral Coligny’s best 
warriors, was the arm used by Calvin to stir up France at the 
beginning of the twenty-two years of religious wars which 
were on the eve of an outbreak. This preacher of the re- 
formed faith was one of those secret wheels which may best 
explain the immense spread of the Reformation. 

Chaudieu led Christophe down to the edge of the water by 
an underground passage like that of the Arche Marion, filled 
in some ten years since. This tunnel between the house of 
Lecamus and that next it ran under the Rue de la Vieille-Pel- 
leterie, and was known as le Pont aux Fourreurs. It was used by 
the dyers of the city as a way down to the river to wash their 
thread, silk, and materials. A little boat lay there, held and 
rowed by one man. In the bows sat a stranger, a small man, 
and very simply dressed. In an instant the boat was in the 
middle of the river, and the boatman steered it under one of 
the wooden arches of the Pont au Change, where he quickly 
secured it to an iron ring. No one had said a word. 

‘* Here we may talk in safety, there are neither spies nor 
traitors,”’ said Chaudieu to the two others. ‘‘Are you filled with 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 57 


the spirit of self-sacrifice that should animate a martyr? Are 
you ready to suffer all things forsour holy cause? Do you 
fear the torments endured by the late King’s tailor and the 
Councilor du Bourg, which of a truth, await us all?’’ He 
spoke to Christophe, looking at him with a radiant face. 

“*T will testify to the Gospel,’’ replied Christophe simply, 
looking up at the windows of the back store. 

The familiar lamp standing on a table, where his father was 
no doubt balancing his books, reminded him by its mild beam 
of the peaceful life and family joys he was renouncing. It was 
_abrief but complete vision. The young man’s fancy took in 
the homely harmony of the whole scene—the places where he 
had spent his happy childhood, where Babette Lallier lived, 
his future wife, where everything promised him a calm and 
busy life; he saw the past, he saw the future, and he sacrificed 
it all. At any rate, he staked it. 

Such were men in those days. 

‘*We need say no more,’’ cried the impetuous boatman. 
‘* We know him for one of the saints. If the Scotchman had 
not dealt the blow, he would have killed the infamous 
Minard.”’ 

“Yes,’’ said Lecamus, ‘‘ my life is in the hands of the 
brethren, and I devote it with joy for the success of the 
Reformation. I have thought of it all seriously. I know 
what we are doing for the joy of the nations. In two 
words, the Papacy makes for celibacy, the Reformation makes 
for the family. It is time to purge France of its monks, to 
restore their possessions to the Crown, which will sell them 
sooner or later to the middle-classes. Let us show that we 
can die for our children and to make our families free and 
happy !”’ 

The young enthusiast’s face, with Chaudieu’s, the boat- 
man’s, and that of the stranger seated in the bows, formed a 
picture that deserves to be described, all the more so because 
such a description entails the whole history of that epoch, if 


58 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


it be true that it is given to some men to sum up in themselves 
the spirit of their age. 

Religious reform, attempted in Germany by Luther, in 
Scotland by John Knox, and in France by Calvin, found 
partisans chiefly among those of the lower classes who had 
begun to think. The great nobles encouraged the movement 
only to serve other interests quite foreign to the religious 
question. These parties were joined by adventurers, by gen- 
tlemen who had lost all, by youngsters to whom every form 
of excitement was acceptable. But, among the artisans and 
men employed in trade, faith was genuine and founded on 
intelligent interests. The poorer nations at once gave their 
adherence to a religion which brought the property of the 
church back to the State, which suppressed the convents, and 
deprived the dignitaries of the church of their enormous rev- 
enues. Everybody in trade calculated the profits from this 
religious transaction, and devoted themselves to it body, soul, 
and purse ; and among the youth of the French citizen class 
the new preaching met that noble disposition for self-sacrifice 
of every kind which animates the young to whom egoism is 
unknown. 

Eminent men, penetrating minds, such as are always to be 
found among the masses, foresaw the Republic in the Refor- 
mation, and hoped to establish throughout Europe a form of 
government like that of the United Netherlands, which at 
last triumphed over the greatest power of the time—Spain, 
ruled by Philip II., and represented in the Low Countries by 
the Duke of Alva. Jean Hotoman was at that time planning 
the famous book in which this scheme is set forth, which dif- 
fused through France the leaven of these ideas, stirred up 
once more by the League,* subdued by Richelieu, and after- 
ward by Louis XIV., to reappear with the Economists and 
the Encyclopedists under Louis XV., and burst into life 
under Louis XVI.; ideas which were always approved by the 


* Headed by Henry, Duke of Guise, 1576. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 59 


younger branches, by the House of Orleans in 1789, as by 
the House of Bourbon in 1589. 

The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion 
is always either a cloak to hide a prince or the swaddling 
wrapper of a new rule. The House of Bourbon, a younger 
branch than the Valois, was busy at the bottom of the Ref- 
ormation. At the moment when the little boat lay moored 
under the arch of the Pont au Change, the question was 
further complicated by the ambition of the Guises, the rivals 
of the Bourbons. Indeed, the Crown, as represented by 
Catherine de’ Medici, could, for thirty years, hold its own in 
the strife by setting these two factions against each other ; 
whereas later, instead of being clutched at by many hands, 
the Crown stood face to face with the people without a 
barrier between ; for Richelieu and Louis XIV. had broken 
down the nobility, and Louis XV. had overthrown the Parle- 
ments. Nowa king alone face to face with a nation, as Louis 
_ XVI. was, must inevitably succumb. . 

Christophe Lecamus was very typical of the ardent and 
devoted sons of the people. His pale complexion had that 
warm burnt hue which is seen in some fair people ; his hair 
was of a coppery yellow; his eyes were bluish-gray and 
sparkled brightly. In them alone was his noble soul visible, 
for his clumsy features did not disguise the somewhat trian- 
gular shape of a plain face by lending it the look of dignity 
which a man of rank can assume, and his forehead was low 
and characteristic only of great energy. His vitality seemed 
to be seated no lower down than his chest, which was some- 
what hollow. Sinewy, rather than muscular, Christophe was 
of tough texture, lean but wiry. His sharp nose showed 
homely cunning and his countenance revealed intelligence of 
the kind that acts wisely on one point of a circle, but that has 
not the power of commanding the whole circumference. His 
eyes, set under brows that projected like a pent-house and 
faintly outlined with light down, were surrounded with broad 


60 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


light-blue circles, with a sheeny white patch at the root of the 
nose, almost always a sign of great excitability. Christophe 
was of the people—the race that fights and allows itself to be 
deceived ; intelligent enough to understand and to serve an 
idea, too noble to take advantage of it, too magnanimous to 
sell himself. 

By the side of old Lecamus’ only son, Chaudieu, the ardent 
minister, lean from watchfulness, with brown hair, a yellow 
skin, a contumacious brow, an eloquent mouth, fiery hazel 
eyes, and a short rounded chin, symbolized that Christian 
zeal which gave the Reformation so many fanatical and earnest 
preachers, whose spirit and boldness fired whole communities. 
This aide-de-camp of Calvin and Théodore de Béze contrasted 
well with the furrier’s son. He represented the living cause 
of which Christophe was the effect. You could not have 
conceived of the active firebrand of the popular machine 
under any other aspect. 

The boatman, an impetuous creature, tanned by the open 
air, the dews of night, and the heats of the day, with firmly 
set lips, quick motions, a hungry, tawny eye like a vulture’s, 
and crisp black hair, was the characteristic adventurer who 
risks his all in an undertaking as a gambler stakes his whole 
fortune on acard. Everything in the man spoke of terrible 
passions and a daring that would flinch at nothing. His 
quivering muscles were as able to keep silence as to speak. 
His look was assertive rather than noble. His nose, upturned 
but narrow, scented battle. He seemed active and adroit. 
In any age you would have known him fora party leader. 
He might have been Pizarro, Hernando Cortez, or Morgan 
the Destroyer if there had been no Reformation—a doer of 
violent deeds. 

The stranger who sat on a seat, wrapped in his cloak, 
evidently belonged to the highest social rank. The fineness 
of his linen, the cut, material, and perfume of his raiment, 
the make and texture of his gloves, showed a man of the 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 61 


Court, as his attitude, his haughtiness, his cool demeanor, and 
his flashing eye revealed a man of war. His appearance was 
at first somewhat alarming and inspired respect. We respect 
a man who respects himself. Though short and hunch- 
backed, his manner made good all the defects of his figure. 
The ice once broken, he had the cheerfulness of decisiveness 
and an indescribable spirit of energy which made him attrac- 
tive. He had the blue eyes and the hooked nose of the 
House of Navarre, and the Spanish look of the marked 
physiognomy that was characteristic of the Bourbon kings. 

With three words the scene became of the greatest interest. 

‘Well, then,’’ said Chaudieu, as Christophe Lecamus 
made his profession of faith, ‘‘this boatman is la Renaudie ; 
and this is Monsiegneur the Prince de Condé,’’ he added 
turning to the hunchback. 

Thus the four men were representative of the faith of the 
people, the intellect of eloquence, the arm of the soldier, and 
- Royalty cast into the shade. 

** You will hear what we require of you,’’ the minister went 
on, after allowing a pause for the young man’s astonishment. 
‘*To the end that you may make no mistakes, we are com- 
pelled to initiate you into the most important secrets of the 
Reformation.”’ . 

The Prince and la Renaudie assented by a gesture, when 
the minister ceased speaking, to allow the Prince to say some- 
thing if he should wish it. Like all men of rank engaged in 
conspiracies, who make it a principle not to appear before 
some critical moment, the Prince kept silence. Not from 
cowardice: at such junctures he was the soul of the scheme, 
shrank from no danger, and risked his head ; but, with a sort 
of royal dignity, he left the explanation of the enterprise to 
the preacher, and was content to study the new instrument he 
was compelled to make use of. 

‘‘Myson,’’ said Chaudieu in Huguenot phraseology, ‘‘ we 
are about to fight the first battle against the Roman whore. 


62 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


In a few days our soldiers must perish at the stake, or the 
Guises must be dead. So, ere long, the King and the two 
Queens will be in our power. This is the first appeal to arms 
by our religion in France, and France will not lay them down 
until she has conquered—it is of the nation that I speak, and 
not of the kingdom. Most of the nobles of the kingdom see 
what the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duke his brother are 
driving at. Under pretense of defending the Catholic faith, 
the House of Lorraine claims the Crown of France as its in- 
heritance. It leans on the church, and has made it a formid- 
able ally ; the monks are its supporters, its acolytes and spies. 
It asserts itself as a protector of the throne it hopes to usurp, 
of the Valois whom it hopes to destroy. 

‘We have decided to rise up in arms, and it is because the 
liberties of the people are threatened as well as the interests of 
the nobility. We must stifle in its infancy a faction as atro- 
cious as that of the Bourguignons, who of old put Paris and 
France to fire and sword. A Louis XI. was needed to end 
the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown, but now 
a Prince of Condé will prevent the Lorrains from going too 
far. This is not a civil war; it is a duel between the Guises 
and the Reformation—a duel to the death! We will see their 
heads laid low, or they shall crush ours !’’ 

** Well spoken !’’ said the Prince. 

‘In these circumstances, Christophe,’’ la Renaudie put in, 
‘we must neglect no means of strengthening our party—for 
there is a party on the side of the Reformation, the party 
of offended rights, of the nobles who are sacrificed to the 
Guises, of the old army leaders so shamefully tricked at Fon- 
tainebleau, whence the cardinal banished them by erecting 
gibbets to hang those who should ask the King for the price 
of their outfit and arrears of pay.’’ 

** Yes, my son,’’ said Chaudieu, seeing some signs of terror 
in Christophe, ‘‘ that is what requires us to triumph by fight- 
ing instead of triumphing by conviction and martyrdom, 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC! 63 


The Queen-mother is ready to enter into our views ; not that 
she is prepared to abjure the Catholic faith—she has not got 
so far as that, but she may perhaps be driven to it by our 
success. Be that as it may, humiliated and desperate as she 
is at seeing the power she had hoped to wield at the King’s 
death in the grasp of the Guises and alarmed by the influence 
exerted by the young Queen Marie, who is their niece and 
partisan, Queen Catherine will be inclined to lend her sup- 
port to the princes and nobles who are about to strike a blow 
for her deliverance. At this moment, though apparently de- 
voted to the Guises, she hates them, longs for their ruin, and 
will make use of us to oppose them; but Monseigneur can 
make use of her to oppose all the others. The Queen-mother 
will consent to all we propose. We have the Connétable 
on our side—Monseigneur has just seen him at Chantilly, 
but he will not stir without orders from his superiors. Being 
Monseigneur’s uncle, he will not leave us in the lurch, and 
- our generous Prince will not hesitate to rush into danger to 
enlist Anne de Montmorency. 

‘« Everything is ready ; and we have cast our eyes on you 
to communicate to Queen Catherine our treaty of alliance, 
our schemes for edicts, and the basis of the new rule. The 
Court is at Blois. Many of our friends are there; but those 
are our future chiefs and, like Monseigneur,’’ and he 
bowed to the Prince, ‘‘they must never be suspected; we 
must sacrifice ourselves for them. The Queen-mother and our 
friends are under such close espionage that it is impossible to 
communicate with them through any one who is known or of 
any consequence. Such a person would be at once suspected, 
and would never be admitted to speak with Madame Cath- 
erine. God should indeed give us at this moment the shepherd 
David with his sling to attack Goliath de Guise. Your 
father—a good Catholic, more’s the pity—is furrier to the 
two Queens; he always has some garment or trimming in 
hand for them; persuade him to send you to the Court. 





64 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


You will arouse no suspicions and will not compromise 
Queen Catherine. Any one of our leaders might lose his 
head for an imprudence which should give rise to a suspicion 
of the Queen-mother’s connivance with us. But where a man 
of importance, once caught out, gives a clue to suspicions, a 
nobody like you escapes scot-free. You see! The Guises 
have so many spies that nowhere but in the middle of the 
river can we talk without fear. So you, my son, are like a 
man on guard, doomed to die at his post. Understand that, 
if you are taken, you are abandoned by us all. If need be, we 
shall cast opprobrium and disgrace on you. If we should be 
forced to it, we should declare that you were a creature of the 
Guises whom they sent to play a part to implicate us. So 
what we ask of you is entire self-sacrifice.”’ 

‘* If you perish,’’ said the Prince de Condé, ‘I pledge my 
word as a gentleman that your family shall be a sacred trust 
to the House of Navarre; I will bear it in my heart and 
serve it in every way.”’ 

‘‘That word, my lord, is enough,’’ replied Christophe, 
forgetting that this leader of faction was a Gascon. ‘‘We 
live in times when every man, prince or citizen, must do his 
duty.’’ 

‘That is a true Huguenot! If all our men were like 
him,’’ said la Renaudie, laying his hand on Christophe’s 
shoulder, ‘‘ we should have won by to-morrow.”’ 

‘¢ Young man,”’ said the Prince, ‘‘ I meant to show you that 
while Chaudieu preaches and the gentleman bears arms, the 
prince fights. Thus, in so fierce a game, every stake has its 
value.”’ 

‘“‘Listen,’’ said la Renaudie; ‘I will not give you the 
papers till we reach Beaugency, for we must run no risks on 
the road. You will find me on the quay there; my face, 
voice, and clothes will be so different that you may not recog- 
nize me. But I will say to you, ‘Are youa Guépin ?’ and you 
must reply, ‘At your service.” As to the manner of proceed- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 65 


ing, I will tell you. You will find a horse at la Pinte fleurie, 
near Saint-Germain ]’Auxerrois. Ask there for Jean le Bre- 
ton, who will take you to the stable and mount you on a nag 
of mine known to cover thirty leagues in eight hours. Leave 
Paris by the Bussy Gate. Breton has a pass for me; take it 
for yourself and be off, riding round outside the towns. You 
should reach Orleans by daybreak.”’ 

‘¢ And the horse ?’’ asked Lecamus. 

‘*He will hold out till you get to Orleans,’’ replied la 
Renaudie. ‘‘ Leave him outside the suburb of Bannier, for 
the gates are well guarded; we must not arouse suspicion. 
You, my friend, must play your part well. You must make 
up any story that may seem to you best to enable you to go 
to the third house on your left on entering Orleans ; it is that 
of one Tourillon, a glover. Knock three raps on the door 
and call out, ‘In the service of Messieurs de Guise!’ The 
man affects to be a fanatical Guésard,; we four only know that 
he is on our side. He will find you a baatman, such another 
as himself of course, but devoted to our cause. Go down to 
the river at once, get into a boat painted green with a white 
border. You ought to be at Beaugency by noonday to- 
morrow. There I will put you in the way of getting a boat 
to carry you down to Blois without running any danger. Our 
enemies the Guises do not command the Loire, only the river- 
ports. ; 

‘¢ You may thus see the Queen in the course of to-morrow 
or of the next day.’’ . 

‘* Your words are graven here,’’ said Christophe, touching 
his forehead. 

Chaudieu embraced his son with religious fervency ; he was 
proud of him. 

‘¢The Lord protect you!’’ he said, pointing to the sunset 
which crimsoned the old roofs covered with shingles, and shot 
fiery gleams among the forest of beams round which the waters 
foamed. 

5 


66 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC. 


«¢ You are of the stock of old Jacques Bonhomme,”’ said la 
Renaudie to Christophe, wringing his hand. 

‘‘We shall meet again, monsteur,’’ said the Prince, witha 
gesture of infinite graciousness, almost of friendliness. 

With a stroke of the oar, la Renaudie carried the young 
conspirator back to the steps leading up to the house, and the 
boat vanished at once under the arches of the Pont au Change. 

Christophe shook the iron gate that closed the entrance 
from the river-side and called out; Mademoiselle Lecamus 
heard him, opened one of the windows of the back store, and 
asked how he came there. Christophe replied that he was 
half-frozen and that she must first let him in. 

‘Young master,’’ said la Bourguignonne, ‘‘ you went out 
by the street-door and come in by the river-gate? Your 
father will be in a pretty rage.’’ ; 

Christophe, bewildered by the secret conference which had 
brought him into contact with the Prince de Condé, la Ren- 
audie, and Chaudieu, and even more agitated by the expected 
turmoil of an imminent civil war, made no reply; he hurried 
up from the kitchen to the back store. There, on seeing him, 
his mother, who was a bigoted old Catholic, could not con- 
tain herself. 

‘¢T will wager,’’ she broke out, ‘‘ that the three men you 
were talking to were ref. “ 

‘¢ Silence, wife,’’ said the prudent old man, whose white 
head was bent over a book. ‘‘ Now, you lazy oafs,’’ he went 
on to three boys who had long since finished supper, ‘‘ what 
are you waiting for to take you to bed? It is eight o’clock. 
You must be up by five in the morning. And first you have 
the Président de Thou’s robes and cap to carry home. Go 
all three together, and carry sticks and rapiers. If you meet 
any more ne’er-do-weels of your own kidney, at any rate there 
will be three of you.”’ 

‘* And are we to carry the ermine surcoat ordered by the 
young Queen, which is to be delivered at the Hétel de 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 67 


Soissons, from whence there is an express to Blois and to the 
Queen-mother ?”’ asked one of the lads. 

‘*No,’’ said the Syndic; ‘‘ Queen Catherine’s account 
amounts to three thousand crowns and I must get the money. 
I think I will go to Blois myself.”’ 

‘¢T should not think of allowing you at your age, father, 
and in such times as these, to expose yourself on the high- 
roads. I am two-and-twenty; you may send me on this 
errand,’’ said Christophe, with an eye on a box which he had 
no doubt contained the surcoat. 

‘¢ Are you glued to the bench ?’’ cried the old man to the 
apprentices, who hastily took up their rapiers and capes and 
Monsieur de Thou’s fur gown. 

This illustrious man was to be received on the morrow by 
the Parlement as their president; he had just signed the 
death-warrant of the Councilor du Bourg, and was fated, be- 
fore the year was out, to sit in judgment on the Prince de 
Condé. 

‘La Bourguignonne,’’ said the old man, ‘‘ go and ask my 
neighbor Lallier if he will sup with us this evening, furnishing 
the wine ; we will give the meal. And, above all, tell him to 
bring his daughter.”’ 


The Syndic of the Guild of Furriers was a handsome old 
man of sixty, with white hair and a broad high forehead. A, 
furrier to the Court for forty years past, he had witnessed al 
the revolutions in the reign of Francis I., and had retained 
his royal patent in spite of feminine rivalries. He had seen 
the arrival at Court of Catherine de’ Medici, then but just 
fifteen ; he had seen her succumb to the Duchesse d’Etampes, 
her father-in-law’s mistress, and to the Duchesse de Valentinois, 
mistress to the late King, her husband. But through all these 
changes the furrier had got into no difficulties, though the 
Court purveyors often fell into disgrace with the ladies they 
served. His prudence was as great as his wealth. He main- 


68 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICZ. 


tained an attitude of excessive humility. Pride had never 
caught him in its snares. The man was so modest, so meek, 
so obliging, so poor—at Court and in the presence of queens, 
princesses, and favorites—that his servility had saved his store 
sign. 

Such a line of policy betrayed, of course, a cunning and 
clear-sighted man. Humble as he was to the outer world, at 
home he was a despot. He was the unquestioned master in 
his own house. He was highly respected by his fellow-mer- 
chants, and derived immense consideration from his long 
tenure of the first place in business. Indeed, he was gladly 
helpful to others; and, among the services he had done, the 
most important perhaps was the support he had long afforded 
to the most famous surgeon of the sixteenth century—Am- 
broise Paré, who owed it to Lecamus that he could pursue his 
studies. In all the disputes that arose between the merchants 
of the guild, Lecamus was for conciliatory measures. Thus 
general esteem had confirmed his supremacy among his equals, 
while his assumed character had preserved him the favor of 
the Court. 

Having, for political reasons, manceuvred in his parish for 
the glory of his trade, he did what was needful to keep him- 
self in asufficient odor of sanctity with the priest of the church 
of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs, who regarded him as one of the 
men most devoted in all Paris to the Catholic faith. Conse- 
quently, when the States-General were convoked, Lecamus 
was unanimously elected to represent the third estate by the 
influence of the priests, which was at that time enormous in 
Paris. 

This old man was one of those deep and silent ambitious 
men who for fifty years are submissive to everybody in turn, 
creeping up from place to place, no one knowing how, till 
they are seen peacefully seated in a position which no one, not 
even the boldest, would have dared to admit was the goal of 
his ambition at the beginning of his life—so long was the 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 69 


climb, so many gulfs were there to leap, into which he might 
fall! Lecamus, who had hidden away a large fortune, would 
run no risks, and was planning a splendid future for his son. 
Instead of that personal ambition which often sacrifices the 
future to the present, he had family ambition, a feeling that 
seems lost in these days, smothered by the stupid regulation of 
inheritance by law. Lecamus foresaw himself president of the 
Paris Parlement in the person of his grandson. 

Christophe, the godson of the great historian, de Thou, had 
received an excellent education, but it had led him to skep- 
ticism and inquiry, which indeed were increasing apace 
among the students and Faculty of the University. Chris- 
tophe was at present studying for the bar, the first step toa 
judgeship. The old furrier pretended to be undecided as to 
his son’s career; sometimes he would make Christophe his 
successor, and sometimes he would have him a pleader ; but in 
his heart he longed to see this son in the seat of a Councilor 
of the Parlement. The furrier longed to place the house of 
Lecamus on a par with the old and honored families of Paris 
citizens which had produced a Pasquier, a Molé, a Miron, a 
Séguier, Lamoignon, du Tillet, Lecoigneux, Lescalopier, the 
Goix, the Arnaulds—all the famous sheriffs and high provosts 
of corporations who had rallied to defend the throne. 

To the end that Christophe might in that day do credit to 
his rank, he wanted him to marry the daughter of the richest 
goldsmith in the city, his neighbor Lallier, whose nephew, at 
a later day, presented the keys of Paris to HenriIV. The 
most deeply rooted purpose in the good man’s heart was to 
spend half his own fortune and half of Lallier’s in the pur- 
chase of a lordly estate, a long and difficult matter in those 
days. 

But he was too deep a schemer, and knew the times too 
well, to overlook the great movements that were being 
hatched; he saw plainly, and saw truly, when he looked 
forward to the division of the kingdom into two camps. The 


70 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


useless executions on the Place de l’Estrapade, that of Henry 
IL.’s tailor, and that, still more recent, of the Councilor 
Anne du Bourg, beside the connivance of the reigning fa- 
vorite in the time of Francis I., and of many nobles now, at 
the progress of reform, all were alarming indications. The 
furrier was determined, come what might, to remain faithful 
tothe church, the Monarchy, and the Parlement, but he was 
secretly well content that his son should join the Reformation. 
He knew that he had wealth enough to ransom Christophe if 
‘the lad should ever compromise himself seriously ; and then, 
if France should turn Calvinist, his son could save the family 
in any furious outbreaks in the capital such as the citizens 
could vividly remember, and as would recur again and again 
through four reigns. 

Like Louis XI., the old furrier never confessed these 
thoughts even to himself; his cunning completely deceived 
his wife and hisson. For many a day this solemn personage 
had been the recognized head of the most populous quarter 
of Paris—the heart of the city—bearing the title of Quar- 
enter, which became notorious fifteen years later. Clothed 
in cloth, like every prudent citizen who obeyed the sumptu- 
ary laws, Master Lecamus—the Sieur Lecamus, a title he 
held in virtue of an edict of Charles V. permitting the citi- 
zens of Paris to purchase Sefeneuries, and their wives to 
assume the fine title of Demoiselle or mistress—wore no gold 
chain, no silk; only a stout doublet with large buttons of 
blackened silver, wrinkled hose drawn up above his knees, 
and leather shoes with buckles. His shirt, of fine linen, was 
pulled out, in the fashion of the time, into full puffs through 
his half-buttoned vest and slashed trunks. 

Though the full light of the lamp fell on the old man’s 
broad and handsome head, Christophe had no inkling of 
the thoughts hidden behind that rich Dutch-looking com- 
plexion ; still he understood that his old father meant to take 
some advantage of his affection for pretty Babette Lallier. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 71 


And Christophe, as a man who has laid his own schemes, 
smiled sadly when he heard the invitation sent to his fair 
mistress. 

As soon as la Bourguignonne and the apprentices were 
gone, old Lecamus looked at his wife with an expression 
that fully showed his firm and resolute temper. 

‘¢You will never rest till you have got the boy hanged 
with your damned tongue!’ said he in stern tones. 

‘¢I would rather see him hanged, but saved, than alive 
and a Huguenot,’’ was the gloomy reply. ‘‘ To think that 
the child I bore within me for nine months should not be a 
good Catholic, but hanker after the heresies of Colas—that 
he must spend all eternity in hell !’? and she began to 
cry. 

‘© You old fool!’’ said the furrier, ‘¢ then give him a chance 
of life, if only to convert him! Why, you said a thing, be- 
fore the apprentices, which might set our house on fire and 
roast us all in it like fleas in straw.’’ 

The mother crossed herself, but said nothing. 

** As for you,’’ said the good man, with a scrutinizing look 
at his son, ‘‘ tell me what you were doing out there on’ the 
water with Come close to me while I speak to you,’ he 
added, seizing his son by the arm and drawing him close to 
him while he whispered in the lad’s ear—‘‘ with the Prince de 
Condé.’’ Christophe started. ‘Do you suppose that the 
Court furrier does not know all their faces? And do you 
fancy that I am not aware of what is going on? Monseigneur 
the Grand Master has ordered out troops to Amboise. And 
when troops are removed from Paris to Amboise while the 
Court is at Blois, when they are marched by way of Chartres 
and Vendéme instead of by Orleans, the meaning is pretty 
clear, heh? Trouble is brewing. 

“‘If the Queens want their surcoats, they will send for 
them. The Prince de Condé may be intending to kill the 
Messieurs de Guise, who on their part mean to get rid of him 








72 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


perhaps. Of what use can a furrier’s son be in such a broil? 
When you are married, when you are a pleader in the Parle- 
ment, you will be as cautious as your father. A furrier’s son 
has no business to be of the new religion till all the rest of 
the world is. I say nothing against the Reformers; it is no 
business of mine; but the Court is Catholic, the two Queens 
are Catholic, the Parlement is Catholic: we serve them with 
furs, and we must be Catholic. 

‘You do not stir from here, Christophe, or I will place 
you with your godfather the Président de Thou, who will keep 
you at it, blackening paper night and day, instead of leaving 
you to blacken your soul in the hell-broth of these damned 
Genevese.’’ 

‘« Father,’’ said Christophe, leaning on the back of the old 
man’s chair, ‘‘send me off to Blois with Queen Marie’s sur- 
coat and to ask for the money, or I am a lost man. And you 
love me——”’ 

“*Lost!’’ echoed his father, without any sign of surprise. 
“‘If you stay here, you will not be lost. I shall know where 
to find you.”’ 

‘¢T shall be killed.” 

‘*Why?’”’ 

‘«The most zealous Huguenots have cast their eyes on me 
to serve them in a certain matter, and if I fail to do what I 
have just promised they will kill me in the street, in the face 
of day, here, as Minard was killed. But if you send me to 
the Court on business of your own, I shall probably be able to 
justify my action to both parties. Either I shall succeed for 
them without running any risk, and so gain a good position in 
the party; or, if the danger is too great, I can do your busi- 
ness only.’’ 

The old man started to his feet as if his seat were of red-hot 
iron. 

‘¢ Wife,’’ said he, ‘‘ leave us, and see that no one intrudes 
on Christophe and me.”’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 73 


When Mistress Lecamus had left the room, the furrier took 
his son by a button and led him to the corner of the room 
which formed the angle toward the bridge. 

‘¢ Christophe,’’ said he, quite into his son’s ear, as he had 
just now spoken of the Prince de Condé, ‘‘ be a Huguenot* if 
that is your pet vice, but with prudence, in your secret heart, 
and not in such a way as to be pointed at by every one in the 
neighborhood. What you have just told me shows me what 
confidence the leaders have in you. What are you to do at 
the Court?’”? — 

‘*T cannot tell you,’ 
know that myself yet.’’ 

‘‘H’m, h’m,”’ said the old man, looking at the lad, ‘‘ the 
young rascal wants to hoodwink his father. He will go far! 
Well, well,’’ he went on, in an undertone, ‘‘ you are not 
going to Blois to make overtures to the Guises, nor to the 
little King our Sovereign, nor to little Queen Mary. All 
. these are Catholics; but I could swear that the Italian Queen 
owes the Scotchwoman and the Lorrains some grudge: I 
know her. She has been dying to put a finger in the pie. 
The late King was so much afraid of her that, like the jewel- 
ers, he used diamond to cut diamond, one woman against an- 
other. Hence Queen Catherine’s hatred of the poor Duch- 
esse de Valentinois, from whom she took the fine Chateau 
of Chenonceaux. But for Monsieur le Connétable, the Duch- 
ess would have had her neck wrung at least 

‘¢ Hands off, my boy! Do not trust yourself within reach 
of the Italian woman, whose only passions are in her head ; 
a bad sort tha Ay, the business you are sent to the Court 
to do will give you a bad headache, I fear,’’ cried the father, 
seeing that Christophe was about to speak. ‘‘ My boy, I have 
two schemes for your future life; you will not spoil them by 
being of service to Queen Catherine. But, for God’s sake, 
keep your head on your shoulders! And the Guises would 


? 


said Christophe; ‘‘I do not quite 





* A term of unknown origin, applied to the Protestants. 


74 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


cut it off as la Bourguignonne cuts off a turnip, for the people 
who are employing you would throw you over at once.’’ 

‘¢T know that, father,’’ said Christophe. 

«¢ And you are so bold as that! You know it, and you will 
risk it ?”’ 

‘< Yes, father.”’ 

‘‘ Why, the devil’s in it!’’ cried the old man, hugging his 
son, ‘‘we may understand each other; you are your father’s 
son. My boy, you will be a credit to the family, and your 
old father may be plain with you, I see. But do not be more 
of a Huguenot than the Messieurs de Coligny ; and do not 
draw your sword. You are to be a man of the pen; stick to 
your part as a sucking lawyer. Well, tell me no more till 
you have succeeded. If I hear nothing of you for four days 
after you reach Blois, that silence will tell me that you are in 
danger. Then the old man will follow to save the young one. 
I have not sold furs for thirty years without knowing the 
seamy side of a Court robe. I can readily find means of open- 
ing doors.”’ 

Christophe stared with amazement at hearing his father 
speak thus ; but he feared some parental snare, and held his 
tongue. 

Then he said— 

*¢ Very well, make up the account; write a letter to the 
Queen. I must be off this moment, or dreadful things will 
happen.” 

‘* Be off? But how?”’ 

‘**T will buy a horse. Write, for God’s sake!’’ 

‘‘Here! Mother! Give your boy some money,” the 
furrier called out to his wife. 

She came in, flew to her chest, and gave a purse to Chris- 
tophe, who excitedly kissed her. 

‘‘The account was ready,’’ said his father; ‘here itis. I 
will write the letter.’’ 

Christophe took the bill and put it in his pocket. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 75 


«< But at any rate you will sup with us,”’ said the goodman. 
‘¢In this extremity you and the Lallier girl must exchange 
rings.”’ 

‘** Well, I will go to fetch her,’’ cried Christophe. 

The young man feared some indecision in his father, whose 
character he did not thoroughly appreciate ; he went up to his 
room, dressed, took out a small trunk, stole downstairs, and 
placed it with his cloak and rapier under a counter in the 
shop. 

‘‘ What the devil are you about ?”’ asked his father, hearing 
him there. 

*¢T do not want any one to see my preparations for leaving ; 
I have put everything under the counter,’’ he whispered in 
reply. 

‘* And here is the letter,’’ said his father. 

Christophe took the paper and went out as if to fetch their 
neighbor. 

A few moments after Christophe had gone out, old Lallier 
and his daughter came in, preceded by a woman-servant 
carrying three bottles of old wine. 

‘¢ Well, and where is Christophe ?’’ asked the furrier and 
his wife. 

‘« Christophe ?’’ said Babette ; ‘‘ we have not seen him.”’ 

‘*A pretty rogue is my son!’’ cried Lecamus. ‘‘ He 
tricks me as if I had no beard. Why, old gossip, what will 
come to us? We live in times when the children are all too 
clever for their fathers! ’’ 

‘‘But he has long been regarded by all the neighbors as a 
mad follower of Colas,’’ said Lallier. 

‘Defend him stoutly on that score,’’ said the furrier to 
the goldsmith. ‘‘ Youth is foolish, and runs after anything 
new ; but Babette will keep him quiet, she is even newer than 
. Calvin.” 

Babette smiled. She truly loved Christophe, was affronted 
by everything that was ever said against him. She was a girl 


76 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


of the good, old middle-class type, brought up under her 
mother’s eye, for she had never left her; her demeanor was 
as gentle and precise as her features; she was dressed in stuff 
of harmonious tones of gray; her ruff, plainly pleated, was a 
- contrast by its whiteness to her sober gown; on her head was 
a black velvet cap, like a child’s hood in shape, but trimmed, 
on each side of her face, with frills and ends of tan-colored 
gauze. Though she was fair-haired, with a white skin, she 
seemed cunning and crafty, though trying to hide her willing- 
ness under the expression of a simple and honest girl. 

As long as the two women remained in the room, coming 
to and fro to lay the cloth, and place the jugs, the large 
pewter dishes, and the knives and forks, the goldsmith and 
his daughter, the furrier and his wife, sat in front of the high 
chimney-place, hung with red serge and black fringes, talking 
of nothing. It was in vain that Babette asked where Chris- 
tophe could be; the young Huguenot’s father and mother 
made ambiguous replies; but as soon as the party had sat 
down to their meal, and the two maids were in the kitchen, 
Lecamus said to his future daughter-in-law— 

‘* Christophe is gone to the Court.”’ 

‘*To Blois! What a journey to take without saying good- 
by to me!”’ said Babette. 

‘He was in a great hurry,’’ said his old mother. 

‘‘Old friend,’ said the furrier to Lallier, taking up the 
thread of the conversation, ‘‘ we are going to see hot work 
in France ; the Reformers are astir.’’ 

“If they win the day it will only be after long fighting, 
which will be very bad for trade,’’ said Lallier, incapable of 
looking higher than the commercial point of view. 

‘¢ My father, who had seen the end of the wars between 
the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs, told me that our family 
would never have lived through them if one of his grand- 
fathers—his mother’s father—had not been one of the Goix, 
the famous butchers at the Halle, who were attached to the 


ABOUT CATHERINE Dk’? MEDIC. ich 


Bourguignons, while the other, a Lecamus, was on the side 
of the Armagnacs; they pretended to be ready to flay each 
other before the outer world, but at home they were very 
good friends. So we will try to save Christophe. Perhaps a 
time may come when he will save us.”’ 

«‘ You are a cunning dog, neighbor,’’ said the goldsmith. 

‘*No,’’ replied Lecamus. ‘‘ The citizen class must take care 
of itself, the populace and the nobility alike owe it a grudge. 
Everybody is afraid of the middle-class in Paris excepting the 
King, who knows us to be his friends.’’ 

‘¢You who know so much, and who have seen so much,”’ 
said Babette timidly, ‘‘ pray tell me what it is that the Re- 
formers want.’’ 

‘© Ay, tell us that, neighbor!’’ cried the goldsmith. ‘I 
knew the late King’s tailor, and I always took him to be a 
simple soul, with no great genius; he was much such another 
as you are, they would have given him the host without re- 
' quiring him to confess, and all the time he was up to his eyes 
in this new religion. He! a man whose ears were worth many 
hundred thousand crowns. He must have known some secrets 
worth hearing for the King and Madame de Valentinois to be 
present when he was tortured.’’ 

‘‘Ay! and terrible secrets too,’’ said the furrier. ‘‘ The 
Reformation, my friends,’’ he went on, in a low voice, “ will 
give the church lands back to the citizen class. When ecclesi- 
astical privileges are annulled, the Reformers mean to claim 
equality of taxation for the nobles and the middle-class, and 
to have only the King above all alike—if indeed they have a 
king at all.’’. 

‘¢What, do away with the throne? ”’ cried Lallier. 

‘‘ Well, neighbor,’’ said Lecamus, ‘‘in the Low Countries 
the citizens govern themselves by provosts over them, who 
elect a temporary chief.’’ 

‘‘God bless me! Neighbor, we might do all these fine 
things and still be Catholics,’’ said the goldsmith. 


78 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


‘‘We are too old to see the triumph of the middle-class in 
Paris, but it will triumph, neighbor, all in good time, all in 
good time! Why, the King is bound to rely on us to hold 
his own, and we have always been well paid for our support. 
And the last time all the citizens were ennobled, and they 
had leave to buy manors, and take the names of their estates 
without any special letters patent from the King. Youand I, 
for instance, grandsons of the Goix in the female line, are we 
not as good as many a nobleman?”’ 

This speech was so alarming to the goldsmith and the two 
women that it was followed by a long silence. The leaven 

_of 1789 was already germinating in the blood of Lecamus, 
who was not yet so old but that he lived to see the daring of 
_ his class under the League. 

“‘Is business pretty firm in spite of all this turmoil ?’’ 
Lallier asked the furrier’s wife. 

‘Tt always upsets trade a little,’’ said she. 

‘‘Ves, and so I have a great mind to make a lawyer of my 
son,’’ added Lecamus, ‘‘ People are always going to law.”’ 

The conversation then dwelt on the commonplace, to the 
goldsmith’s great satisfaction, for he did not like political 
disturbances or over-boldness of thought. 


The banks of the Loire, from Blois as far as Angers, were 

_ always greatly favored by the two last branches of the royal 
family who occupied the throne before the advent of the 
Bourbons. This beautiful valley so well deserves the prefer- 
ence of kings that one of our most elegant writers describes 
it as follows: ‘‘ There is a province in France which is never 
sufficiently admired. As fragrant as Italy, as flowery as the 
banks of the Guadalquivir, beautiful beside with its own pecu- 
liar beauty. Wholly French, it has always been French, un- 
like our Northern provinces, debased by Teutonic influence, 
or our Southern provinces, which have been the concubines of 
the Moors, of the Spaniards, of every nation that has coveted 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 79 


them—this pure, chaste, brave, and loyal tract is Touraine! 
There is the seat of historic France. Auvergne is Auvergne, 
Languedoc is Languedoc and nothing more; but Touraine is 
France, and the truly national river to us is the Loire which 
waters Touraine. We need not, therefore, be surprised to 
find such a quantity of monuments in the departments which 
have taken their names from that of the Loire and its deriva- 
tions. At every step in that land of enchantment we come 
upon a picture of which the foreground is the river, or some 
calm reach, in whose liquid depths are mirrored a chateau, 
with its turrets, its woods, and its dancing springs. It was 
only natural that large fortunes should centre around spots 
where Royalty preferred to live, and where it so long held its 
Court, and that distinguished birth and merit should crowd 
thither and build palaces on a par with Royalty itself.”’ 

Is it not strange, indeed, that our sovereigns should never 
have taken the advice indirectly given them by Louis XI., and 
‘have made Tours the capital of the kingdom? Without any 
great expendituré, the Loire might have been made navigable 
so far for trading vessels and light ships of war. There the 
seat of Government would have been safe from surprise and 
high-handed invasion. There the strongholds of the north 
would not have needed such sums for their fortifications, 
which alone have cost as much money as all the splendors of 
Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to Vauban’s advice, 
and had his palace built at Mont-Louis, between the Loire 
and the Cher, perhaps the Revolution of 1789 would never 
have taken place. 

So these fair banks bear, at various spots, clear marks of 
royal favor. The castles of Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Che- 
nonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-les-Tours, all the residences 
built by kings’ mistresses, by financiers, and noblemen, at 
Véretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Ussé, Villandri, Valengay, Chante- 
loup, and Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though 
most are sfill standing, are splendid buildings, full of the 


80 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


wonders of the period that has been so little appreciated by 
the literary sect of Medizevalists. 

Of all these castles, that of Blois, where the Court was 
then residing, is the one on which the magnificence of the 
Houses of Orleans and of Valois has most splendidly set its 
stamp ; and it is the most curious to historians, archeologists, 
and Catholics. At that time it stood quite alone. The town, 
inclosed in strong walls with towers, lay below the stronghold, 
for at that time the castle served both as a citadel and as 
a country residence. Overlooking the town, of which the 
houses, then as now, climbed the hill on the right bank of 
the river, their blue slate roofs in close array, there is a trian- 
gular plateau, divided by a stream, now unimportant since it 
runs underground, but in the fifteenth century, as historians 
tell us, flowing at the bottom of a rather deep ravine, part of 
which remains as a deep hollow-way, almost a precipice, be- 
tween the suburb and the castle. 

It was on this plateau, with a slope to the north and south, 
that the Comtes de Blois built themselves a ‘‘ castel’’ in the 
architecture of the twelfth century, where the notorious Thi- 
bault le Tricheur, Thibault le Vieux, and many more held a 
court that became famous. In those days of pure feudal rule, 
when the King was no more than zuzer pares primus (the first 
among equals), as a King of Poland finely expressed it, the 
Counts of Champagne, of Blois, and of Anjou, the mere 
Barons of Normandy, and the Dukes of Brittany lived in the 
style of sovereigns and gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. 
The Plantagenets of Anjou, the Lusignans of Poitou, the 
Roberts and Williams of Normandy, by their audacious cour- 
age mingled their blood with royal races, and sometimes a 
simple knight, like du Glaicquin (or du Guesclin), refused 
royal purple and preferred the Constable’s sword. 

When the Crown had secured Blois as a royal demesne, 
Louis XII., who took a fancy to the place, perhaps to get 
away from Plessis and its sinister associations, built on to the 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICZ. 81 


castle, at an angle, so as to face east and west, a wing con- 
necting the residence of the Counts of Blois with the older 
structure, of which nothing now remains but the immense hall 
where the States-General sat under Henri III. Francis I., 
before he fell in love with Chambord, intended to finish the 
castle by building on the other two sides of a square; but he 
abandoned Blois for Chambord, and erected only one wing, 
which in his time and in that of his grandsons practically 
constituted the castle. 

This third building of Francis I.’s is much more extensive 
and more highly decorated than the Louvre de Henri JT., as 
it is called. It is one of the most fantastic efforts of the archi- 
tecture of the Renaissance. Indeed, at a time when a more 
reserved style of building prevailed, and no one cared for the 
Middle Ages, a time when literature was not so intimately al- 
lied with art as it now is, La Fontaine wrote of the Castle of 
Blois in his characteristically artless language: ‘‘ Looking at 
it from outside, the part done by order of Francis I. pleased 
me more than all the rest; there are a number of little win- 
dows, little balconies, little colonnades, little ornaments, not 
regularly ordered, which make up something great which I 
found very pleasing.’’ 

Thus the Castle of Blois had the attraction of representing 
three different kinds of architecture—three periods, three 
systems, three dynasties. And there is not, perhaps, any other 
royal residence which in this respect can compare with it. 
The vast building shows, in one inclosure, in one courtyard, a 
complete picture of that great product of national life and 
manners which architecture always is. 

At the time when Christophe was bound for the Court, that 
portion of the precincts on which a fourth palace now stands 
—the wing added seventy years later, during his exile, by 
Gaston, Louis XIII.’s rebellious brother—was laid out in pas- 
tures and terraced gardens, picturesquely scattered among the 
foundation stones and unfinished towers begun by Francis I. 

6 


82 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC. 


These gardens were joined by a bold flying bridge—which 
some old inhabitants still alive saw destroyed—to a garden on 
the other side of the castle, which by the slope of the ground 
lay on the same level. The gentlemen attached to Queen 
Anne of Brittany, or those who approached her with petitions 
from her native province, to discuss or to inform her of the 
state of affairs there, were wont to await her pleasure here, her 
lever, or the hour of her walking out. Hence history has 
handed down to us as the name of this pleasaunce La Perchoir 
aux Bretons (the Bretons’ Perch); it is now an orchard be- 
longing to some private citizen, projecting beyond the Place 
des Jésuites. That square also was then included in the do- 
main of this noble residence which had its upper and its lower 
gardens. At some distance from the Place des Jésuites, a 
summer-house may still be seen, built by Catherine de’ Medici, 
as local historians tell us, to accommodate her hot-baths. 
This statement enables us to trace the very irregular arrange- 
ment of the gardens which went up and down hill, following 
the undulations of the soil ; the land about the castle is indeed 
very uneven, a fact which added to its strength, and, as we 
shall see, caused the difficulties of the Duc de Guise. 

The gardens were reached by corridors and terraces; the 
chief corridor was known as the Galerie des Cerfs (or stags), 
on account of its decorations. This passage led to a magnifi- 
cent staircase, which undoubtedly suggested the famous double 
staircase at Chambord, and which led to the apartments on 
each floor. 

Though La Fontaine preferred the chateau of Francis I. to 
that of Louis XII., the simplicity of the Pere du Peuple 
(Father of the People) may perhaps charm the genuine artist, 
much as he may admire the splendor of the more chivalrous 
king. The elegance of the two staircases which lie at the two 
extremities of Louis XII.’s building, the quantity of fine and 
original carving, of which, though time has damaged them, 
the remains are still the delight of antiquaries ; everything, to 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 83 


the almost cloister-like arrangement of the rooms, points to 
very simple habits. As yet the Court was evidently non- 
existent, or had not attained such development as Francis I. 
and Catherine de’ Medici subsequently gave it, to the great 
detriment of feudal manners. As we admire the brackets, the 
capitals of some of the columns, and some little figures of ex- 
quisite delicacy, it is impossible not to fancy that Michel 
Colomb, the great sculptor, the Michael Angelo of Brittany, 
must have passed that way to do his Queen Anne a pleasure 
before immortalizing her on her father’s tomb—the last Duke 
of Brittany. 

Whatever La Fontaine may say, nothing can be more 
stately than the residence of Francis, the magnificent King. 
Thanks to I know not what coarse indifference, perhaps to utter 
forgetfulness, the rooms occupied by Catherine de’ Medici and 
her son Francis II. still remain almost in their original state, 
The historian may reanimate them with the tragical scenes 
of the Reformation, of which the struggle of the Guises and 
the Bourbons against the House of Valois formed a compli- 
cated drama played out on this spot. 

The buildings of Francis I. quite crush the simpler resi- 
dence of Louis XII. by sheer mass. From the side of the 
lower gardens—that is to say, from the modern Place des 
Jésuites—the castle is twice as lofty as from the side 
toward the inner court. The first floor, in which are the 
famous corridors, is the third floor in the garden-front. Thus 
the second floor, where Queen Catherine resided, is in fact 
the fourth, and the royal apartments are on the fifth above the 
lower garden, which at that time was divided from the foun- 
dations by a very deep moat. Thus the castle, imposing as it 
is from the court, seems quite gigantic when seen from the 
square as La Fontaine saw it, for he owns that he never had 
been into the court or the rooms. From the Place des Jésuites 
every detail looks small. The balconies you can walk along, 
the colonnades of exquisite workmanship, the sculptured 


84 | ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC. 


windows—their recesses within, as large as small rooms, and 
used, in fact, at that time as boudoirs—have a general effect 
resembling the painted fancies of operatic scenery when the 
artist represents a fairy palace. But, once inside the court, 
the infinite delicacy of this architectural ornamentation is 
displayed, to the joy of the amazed spectator, though the 
stories above the first floor are, even there, as high as the 
Pavillon de 1’Horloge at the Tuileries. 

This part of the building, where Catherine and Mary 
Stewart held magnificent court, had in the middle of the 
facade a hexagonal hollow tower, up which winds a staircase 
in stone, an arabesque device invented by giants and exe- 
cuted by dwarfs to. give this front the effect of a dream. 
The balustrade of the stairs rises in a spiral of rectangular 
panels composing the five walls of the tower, and forming at 
regular intervals a transverse cornice, enriched outside and in 
with florid carvings in stone. This bewildering creation, full 
of delicate and ingenious details and marvels of workmanship, 
by which these stones speak to us, can only be compared to 
the overcharged and deeply cut ivory carvings that come from 
China, or are made at Dieppe. In Short, the stone is like 
lace. Flowers and figures of men and animals creep down 
the ribs, multiply at every step, and crown the vault with a 
pendant, in which the chisels of sixteenth-century sculptors 
have outdone the artless stone-carvers, who, fifty years before, 
had made the pendants for two staircases in Louis XII.’s 
building. Though we may be dazzled as we note these varied 
forms repeated with infinite prolixity, we nevertheless perceive ' 
that Francis I. lacked money.for Blois, just as Louis XIV. did 
for Versailles. In more than one instance a graceful head 
looks out from a block of stone almost in the rough. More 
than one fanciful boss is but sketched with a few strokes of 
the chisel, and then abandoned to the damp, which has over- 
grown it with green mold. On the facade, by the side of one 
window carved like lace, another shows us the massive frame 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 85 


eaten into by time, which has carved it after a manner of its 
own. 

The least artistic, the least experienced eye finds here a de- 
lightful contrast between this front, rippling with marvels of 
design, and the inner front of Louis XII.’s castle, consisting 
on the first floor of arches of the airiest lightness, upheld by 
slender columns, resting on elegant balustrades, and two 
stories above with windows wrought with charming severity. 
Under the arches runs a gallery, of which the walls were 
painted in fresco; the vaulting, too, must have been painted, 
for some traces are still visible of that magnificence, imitated 
from Italian architecture—a reminiscence of our King’s jour- 
neys thither when the Milanese belonged to them. 

Opposite the residence of Francis I. there was at that time 
the chapel of the Counts of Blois, its facade almost harmon- 
izing with the architecture of Louis XII.’s building. No 
figure of speech can give an adequate idea of the solid dignity 

‘of these three masses of building. In spite of the varieties 
of style, a certain imposing royalty, showing the extent of its 
fear by the magnitude of its defenses, held the three build- 
ings together, different as they were; two of them flanking 
the immense hall of the States-General, as vast and lofty as a 
church. 

And. certainly neither the simplicity nor the solidity of 
those citizen lives which were described at the beginning 
of this narrative—lives in which art was always represented— 
was lacking to this royal residence. Blois was the fertile and 
brilliant example which found a living response from citizens 
and nobles, from money and rank, alike in the towns and in 
the country. You could not have wished that the home of the 
King who ruled Paris as it was in the sixteenth century should 
be other than this. The splendid raiment of the upper 
classes, the luxury of feminine attire, must have seemed singu- 
larly suited to the elaborate dress of these curiously wrought 
stones. 


86 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


From floor to floor, as he mounted the wonderful stairs of 
his Castle of Blois, the King of France could see farther and 
farther over the beautiful Loire, which brought him news of 
all.his realm, which it parts into two confronted and almost 
rival halves. If, instead of placing Chambord in a dead and 
gloomy plain two leagues away, Francis I. had built a Cham- 
bord to complete Blois on the site of the gardens, where 
Gaston subsequently erected his palace, Versailles would never 
have existed and Blois would inevitably have become the 
capital of France. 

Four Valois’ and Catherine de’ Medici lavished their wealth 
on the Castle of Blois, but any one can guess how prodigal 
the sovereigns were only from seeing the thick dividing wall, 
the spinal column of the building, with deep alcoves cut into 
its substance, secret stairs and closets contrived within it, 
surrounding such vast rooms as the council hall, the guard- 
room, and the royal apartments, in which a company of in- 
fantry now finds ample quarters. Even if the visitor should 
fail to understand at a first glance that the marvels of the 
interior are worthy of those of the exterior, the remains of 
Catherine de’ Medici’s room—into which Christophe was 
presently admitted—are sufficient evidence of the elegant art 
which peopled these rooms with lively fancies, with sala- 
manders sparkling among flowers, with all the most bril- 
liant hues of the palette of the sixteenth century decora- 
ting the darkest staircase. In that room the observer may 
still see the traces of that love of gilding which Catherine had 
brought from Italy, for the princesses of her country loved (as 
the author above quoted delightfully expresses it) to overlay 
the castles of France with the gold gained in trade by their 
ancestors, and to stamp the walls of royal rooms with the 
sign of their wealth. 

The Queen-mother occupied the rooms on the first floor 
that had formerly been those of Queen Claude de France, 
Francis I.’s wife ; and the delicate sculpture is still to be seen 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 87 


of double C’s, with a device in pure white of swans and 
lilies, signifying Candiaior candidts (the whitest of the white), 
the badge of that Queen whose name, like Catherine’s, began 
with C, and equally appropriate to Louis XII.’s daughter and 
‘to the mother of the Valois; for notwithstanding the violence 
of Calvinist slander, no doubt was ever thrown on Catherine 
de’ Medici’s enduring fidelity to Henri II. 

The Queen-mother, with two young children still on her 
hands—a boy, afterward the Duc d’Alengon, and Marguerite, 
who became the wife of Henri IV., and whom Charles IX. 
called Margot—needed the whole of this second floor. 

King Francis II. and his Queen, Mary Stewart, had the 
royal apartments on the third floor that Francis I. had occu- 
pied, and which were also those of Henri III. The royal 
apartments and those of the Queen-mother are divided from 
end to end of the castle into two parts by the famous party 
wall, four feet thick, which supports the thrust of the im- 
mensely thick walls of the rooms. Thus on the lower as well 
as on the upper floors the rooms are in two distinct suites. 
That -half which, facing to the south, is lighted from the 
court, held the rooms for state receptions and public busi- 
ness; while, to escape the heat, the private rooms had a north 
aspect, where there is a splendid frontage with arcades and 
balconies, and a view over the country of the Venddémois, 
the Perchotr aux Bretons, and the moats of the town—the 
only town mentioned by the great fable writer, the admirable 
La Fontaine. 

Francis I,’s castle at that time ended at an enormous tower, 
only begun, but intended to mark the vast angle the palace 
would have formed in turning a flank; Gaston subsequently 
demolished part of its walls to attach his palace to the tower ; 
but he never finished the work, and the tower remains a ruin.: 
This royal keep was used as a prison, or, according to popular 
tradition, as oubtettes (dungeon cells). What poet could not 
feel deep regret or weep for France as he wanders now through 


88 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


the hall of this magnificent castle, and sees the exquisite 
arabesques of Catherine de’ Medici’s room, whitewashed and 
almost smothered by order of the governor of the barracks 
at the time of the cholera—for this royal residence is now a 
barrack. 

The paneling of Catherine de’ Medici’s closet, of which 
more particular mention will presently be made, is the last 
relic of the rich furnishing collected by five artistic kings. 

As we make our way through this labyrinth of rooms, halls, 
staircases, and turrets, we can say with horrible certainty, 
‘Here Mary Stewart cajoled her husband in favor of the 
Guises. There those Guises insulted Catherine. Later, on 
this very spot, the younger Balafré* fell under the swords of 
the avengers of the Crown. A century earlier Louis XII. 
signaled from that window to invite the advance of his friend 
the Cardinal d’Amboise. From this balcony, d’Epernon, 
Ravaillac’s accomplice, welcomed Queen Marie de’ Medici, 
who, it is said, knew of the intended regicide and left things 
to take their course !”’ 

In the chapel where Henry IV. and Marguerite de Valois 
were betrothed—the last remnant of the old castle of the 
Counts of Blois—the regimental boots are made. This won- 
derful structure, where so many styles are combined, where 
such great events have been accomplished, is in a state of 
ruin which is a disgrace to France. How grievous it is to 
those who love the memorial buildings of old France to feel 
that ere long these eloquent stones will have gone the way of 
the house at the corner of the Rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie: 
they will survive, perhaps, only in these pages. 


It is necessary to observe that, in order to keep a keener 
eye on the Court, the Guises, though they had a mansion in 
the town, which is still to be seen, had obtained permission 
to reside above the rooms of Louis XII. in the apartments 


* The gashed or scarred. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC1. 89 


since used by the Duchesse de Nemours, in the upper story 
on the second floor. 

Francis II. and his young Queen, Mary Stewart, in love 
like two children of sixteen, as they were, had been suddenly 
transferred, one cold winter’s day, from Saint-Germain, which 
the Duc de Guise thought too open to surprise, to the strong- 
hold, as it then was, of Blois, isolated on three sides by pre- 
cipitous slopes, while its gates were strictly guarded. The 
Guises, the Queen’s uncles, had the strongest reasons for not 
living in Paris, and for detaining the Court in a place which 
could be easily guarded and defended. 

A struggle for the throne was being carried on, which was 
not ended until twenty-eight years later, in 1588, when, in 
this same Castle of Blois, Henri III., bitterly humiliated by 
the House of Lorraine, under his mother’s very eyes, planned 
the death of the boldest of. the Guises, the second Balafré (or 
scarred), son of the first Balafré, by whom Catherine de’ Medici 
' was tricked, imprisoned, spied on, and threatened. 

Indeed, the fine Castle of Blois was to Catherine the strictest 
prison. On the death of her husband, who had always kept 
her in leading-strings, she had hoped to rule; but, on the con- 
trary, she found herself a slave to strangers, whose politeness 
was infinitely more cruel than the brutality of gaolers. She 
could do nothing that was not known. Those of her ladies 
who were attached to her either had lovers devoted to the 
Guises, or Argus eyes watching over them. Indeed, at that 
time the conflict of passions had the capricious vagaries which 
they always derive from the powerful antagonism of two hostile 
interests in the State. Love-making, which served Catherine 
well, was also an instrument in the hands of the Guises. Thus 
the Prince de Condé, the leader of the Reformed party, was 
attached to the Maréchale de Saint-André, whose husband 
was the Grand Master’s tool. The cardinal, who had learned 
from the affair of the Vidame de Chartres that Catherine was 
unconquered rather than unconquerable, was paying court to 


90 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


her. Thus the play of passions brought strange complications 
into that of politics, making a double game of chess, as it 
were, in which it was necessary to read both the heart and 
brain of a man, and to judge, on occasion, whether one would 
not belie the other. 

Though she lived constantly under the eye of the Cardinal 
de Lorraine or of his brother, the Duc Francois de Guise, 
who both distrusted her, Catherine’s most immediate and 
shrewdest enemy was her daughter-in-law, Queen Mary, a 
little, fair girl as mischievous as a waiting-maid, as proud as a 
Stewart might be who wore three crowns, as learned as an 
ancient scholar, as tricky as a schoolgirl, as much in love 
with her husband as a courtesan of her lover, devoted to her 
uncles, whom she admired, and delighted to find that King 
Francis, by her persuasion, shared her high opinion of them. 
A mother-in-law is always a person disliked by her daughter- 
in-law, especially when she has won the crown and would like 
to keep it—as Catherine had imprudently too plainly shown. 
Her former position, when Diane de Poitiers ruled King 
Henri II., had been more endurable; at least she had enjoyed 
the homage due to a Queen and the respect of the Court ; 
whereas, now, the Duke and the cardinal, having none about 
them but their own creatures, seemed to take pleasure in 
humiliating her. Catherine, a prisoner among courtiers, was 
the object, not every day, but every hour, of blows offensive 
to her dignity; for the Guises persisted in carrying on the 
same system as the late King had employed to thwart her. 

The six-and-thirty years of disaster which devastated France 
may be said to have begun with the scene in which the most 
perilous part had been allotted to the son of the Queen’s 
furrier—a part which makes him the leading figure in this 
narrative. The danger into which this zealous reformer was 
falling became evident in the course of the morning when he 
set out from the river-port of Beaugency, carrying precious 
documents which compromised the loftiest heads of the 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICZ. 91 


nobility, and embarked for Blois in company with a crafty 
partisan, the indefatigable la Renaudie, who had arrived on 
the quay before him. 

While the barque conveying Christophe was being wafted 
down the Loire before a light easterly breeze, the famous 
Cardinal de Lorraine and the second Duc de Guise, one of 
the greatest war captains of the time, were considering their 
position, like two eagles on a rocky peak, and looking cau- 
tiously round before striking the first great blow by which they 
tried to kill the Reformation in France. This was to be 
struck at Amboise, and it was repeated in Paris twelve years 
later, on the 24th August, 1572. 

In the course of the previous night, three gentlemen, who 
played an important part in the twelve years’ drama that arose 
from this double plot laid by the Guises on one hand and the 
Reformers on the other, had arrived at the castle at a furious 
gallop, leaving their horses half-dead at the postern gate, held 
‘by captains and men who were wholly devoted to the Duc de 
Guise, the idol of the soldiery. 

A word must be said as to this great man, and first of all 
a word to explain his present position. 

His mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, great-aunt of Henri 
IV. But, of what account are alliances? At this moment he 
aimed at nothing less than his cousin de Condé’s head. 
Mary Stewart was his niece. His wife was Anne, daughter 
of the Duke of Ferrara. The Grand Connétable Anne de 
Montmorency addressed the Duc de Guise as ‘‘ Monseigneur,”’ 
as he wrote to the King, and signed himself ‘* Your very hum- 
ble servant.’’ Guise, the Grand Master of the King’s house- 
hold, wrote in reply, ‘‘ Monsieur le Connétable,’’ and signed, 
as in writing to the Parlement, ‘‘ Your faithful friend.”’ 

As for the cardinal, nicknamed the Trans-Alpine Pope, and 
spoken of by Estienne as ‘‘ His Holiness,’’ the whole monastic 
church of France was on his side, and he treated with the 
Pope as his equal. He was vain of his eloquence, and one 


92 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


of the ablest theologians of his time, while he kept watch over 
France and Italy by the instrumentality of three religious 
Orders entirely devoted to him, who were on foot for him day 
and night, serving him as spies and reporters. 

These few words are enough to show to what a height of 
power the cardinal and the Duke had risen. In spite of their 
wealth and the revenues of their offices, they were so entirely 
disinterested, or so much carried away by the tide of poli- 
tics, and so generous too, that both were in debt—no doubt 
after the manner of Cesar. Hence, when Henri III. had 
seen his threatening foe murdered, the second Balafré, the 
House of Guise was inevitably ruined. Their vast outlay for 
above a century, in hope of seizing the Crown, accounts for 
the decay of this great House under Louis XIII. and Louis 
XIV., when the sudden end of MapamgE revealed to all Europe 
how low a Chevalier de Lorraine had fallen. 

So the cardinal and the Duke, proclaiming themselves the 
heirs of the deposed Carlovingian kings, behaved very inso- 
lently to Catherine de’ Medici, their niece’s mother-in-law. 
The Duchesse de Guise spared Catherine no mortification ; 
she was an Este, and Catherine de’ Medici was the daughter 
of self-made Florentine merchants, whom the sovereigns of 
Europe had not yet admitted to their royal fraternity. Francis 
I. had regarded his son’s marriage with a Medici as a mésal- 
liance, and had only allowed it in the belief that this son 
would never be the Dauphin. Hence his fury when the 
Dauphin died, poisoned by the Florentine Montecuculi. 

The Estes refused to recognize the Medici as Italian princes. 
These time-honored merchants were, in fact, struggling with 
the impossible problem of maintaining a throne in the midst 
of republican institutions. The title of Grand Duke was not 
bestowed on the Medici till much later by Philip II., King of 
Spain ; and they earned it by treason to France, their bene- 
factress, and by a servile attachment to the Court of Spain, 
which was covertly thwarting them in Italy. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 93 


‘* Flatter none but your enemies!’’ This great axiom, 
uttered by Catherine, would seem to have ruled all the policy 
of this merchant race, which never lacked great men till its 
destinies had grown great, and which broke down a little too 
soon under the degeneracy which is always the end of royal 
dynasties and great families. 

For three generations there was a prelate and a warrior of 
the House of Lorraine ; but, which is perhaps not less remark- 
able, the churchman had always shown—as did the present 
cardinal—a singular likeness to Cardinal Ximenes, whom the 
Cardinal de Richelieu also resembled. These five prelates all 
had faces that were at once mean and terrifying; while the 
warrior’s face was of that Basque and mountain type which re- 
appears in the featuresof HenriIV. In both the father and the 
son it was seamed by a scar, which did not destroy the grace 
and affability that bewitched their soldiers as much as their 
bravery. 

The way and the occasion of the Grand Master’s being 
wounded is not without interest here, for it was healed by the 
daring of one of the personages of this drama, Ambroise 
Paré, who was under obligation to the Syndic of the furriers. 
At the siege of Calais the Duke’s head was pierced by a lance 
which, entering below the right eye, went through to the neck 
below the left ear; the end broke off and remained in the 
wound. The Duke was lying in his tent in the midst of the 
general woe, and would have died but for the bold promptitude 
and devotion of Ambroise Paré. 

‘¢ The Duke is not dead, gentlemen,”’ said Paré, turning to 
the bystanders, who were dissolved in tears. ‘‘ But he soon 
will be,’’ he added, ‘‘ unless I treat him as if he were, and I 
will try it at the risk of the worst that can befall me You 
see!” 

He set his left foot on the Duke’s breast, took the stump of 
the lance with his nails, loosened it by degrees, and at last 
drew the spear-head out of the wound, as if it had been from 





94 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


some senseless object instead of a man’s head. ‘Though he 
cured the Prince he had handled so boldly, he could not hinder 
him from bearing to his grave the terrible scar from which he 
had his name. His son also had the same nickname for a 
similar reason. 

Having gained entire mastery over the King, who was ruled 
by his wife, as a result of the passionate and mutual affection 
which the Guises knew how to turn to account, the two great 
Princes of Lorraine reigned over France, and had not an 
enemy at Court but Catherine de’ Medici. And no great 
politician ever played a closer game. The respective attitudes 
of Henry II.’s ambitious widow, and of the no less ambitious 
House of Lorraine, was symbolized, as it were, by the posi- 
tions they held on the terrace of the castle on the very morn- 
ing when Christophe was about to arrive there. The Queen- 
mother, feigning extreme affection for the Guises, had asked 
to be informed as to the news brought by the three gentlemen 
who had arrived from different parts of the kingdom ; but she 
had been mortified by a polite dismissal from the cardinal. 
She was walking at the farther end of the pleasaunce above the 
Loire, where she was having an observatory erected for her 
astrologer, Ruggieri; the building may still be seen, and from 
it a wide view is to be had over the beautiful valley. The two 
Guises were on the opposite side overlooking the Vendémois, 
the upper part of the town, the Perchoir aux Bretons, and the 
postern gate of the castle. 

Catherine had deceived the brothers, tricking them by an 
assumption of dissatisfaction ; for she was really very glad to 
be able to speak with one of the gentlemen who had come in 
hot haste, and who was in her secret confidence ; who boldly 
played a double game, but who was, to be sure, well paid 
for it. This gentleman was Chiverni, who affected to be 
the mere tool of the Cardinal de Lorraine, but who was in 
reality in Catherine’s service. Catherine had two other de- 
voted allies in the two Gondis, creatures of her own; but 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 95 


they, as Florentines, were too open to the suspicion of the 
Guises to be sent into the country ; she kept them at the Court, 
where their every word and action was closely watched, but 
where they, on their side, watched the Guises and reported to 
Catherine. These two Italians kept a third adherent to the © 
Queen-mother’s faction, Birague, a clever Piedmontese, who, 
like Chiverni, pretended to have abandoned Catherine to 
attach himself to the Guises, and who encouraged them in 
their undertakings while spying for Catherine. 

Chiverni had arrived from Ecouen and Paris. The last 
to ride in was Saint-André, Marshal of France, who rose to 
be such an important personage that the Guises adopted him 
as the third of the triumvirate they formed against Catherine 
in the following year. But earlier than either of these, Vieil- 
leville, the builder of the Castle of Duretal, who had also by 
his devotion to the Guises earned the rank of marshal, had 
secretly come and more secretly gone, without any one know- 
ing what the mission might be that the Grand Master had 
given him. Saint-André, it was known, had been instructed 
to take military measures to entice all the reformers who were 
under arms to Amboise, as the result of a council held by the 
Cardinal de Lorraine, the Duc de Guise, Birague, Chiverni, 
Vieilleville, and Saint-André. As the heads of the House of 
Lorraine thus employed Birague, it is to be supposed that they 
trusted to their strength, for they knew that he was attached 
to the Queen-mother ; but it is possible that they kept him 
about them with a view to discovering their rival’s secret de- 
signs, as she allowed him to attend them. In those strange 
times the double part played by some political intriguers was 
known to both the parties who employed them; they were 
like cards in the hands of players, and the craftiest won the 
game. 

All through this sitting the brothers had been. impenetrably 
guarded. Catherine’s conversation with her friends will, how- 
ever, fully explain the purpose of this meeting, convened by 


96 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


the Guises in the open air, at break of day, in the terraced 
garden, as though every one feared to speak within the walls 
full of ears of the Castle of Blois. 

The Queen-mother, who had been walking about all the 
morning with the two Gondi, under pretense of examining the 
observatory that was being built, but, in fact, anxiously watch- 
ing the hostile party, was presently joined by Chiverni. She 
was standing at the angle of the terrace opposite the church 
of Saint-Nicholas, and there feared no listeners. The wall is 
as high as the church-towers, and the Guises always held 
council at the other corner of the terrace, below the dungeon 
then begun, walking to and from the Perchoir des Bretons 
and the arcade by the bridge which joined the gardens to the 
Perchoir. ‘There was nobody at the bottom of the ravine. 

Chiverni took the Queen’s hand to kiss it, and slipped into 
her fingers a tiny letter without being seen by the Italians. 
Catherine quickly turned away, walked to the corner of the 
parapet, and read as follows: 


**You are powerful enough to keep the balance true be- 
tween the great ones, and to make them contend as to which 
shall serve you best ; you have your house full of kings, and need 
not fear either Lorrains or Bourbons so long as you set them 
against each other; for both sides aim at snatching the crown 
from your children. Be your advisers’ mistress, and not their 
slave ; keep up each side by the other ; otherwise the kingdom 
will go from bad to worse and great wars may ensue. 


‘‘ L H6OprTAL.”? 


The Queen placed this letter in the bosom of her stomacher, 
reminding herself to burn it as soon as she should be alone. 

‘* When did you see him? ’”’ she asked Chiverni. 

‘*On returning from seeing the Connétable at Melum ; he 
was going through with the Duchesse de Berri, whom he was 
most anxious to convey in safety to Savoy, so as to return 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 97 


here and enlighten the Chancellor Olivier, who is, in fact, 
the dupe of the Lorrains. Monsieur de |’ Hépital is resolved 
to adhere to your cause, seeing the aims that the Messieurs de 
Guise have in view. And he will hasten back as fast as 
possible to give you his vote in the council.’’ 

‘Is he sincere?’’ said Catherine. ‘‘ For you know that 
when the Lorrains admitted him to the council, it was to 
enable them to rule.’’ 

‘«T,’H6pital is a Frenchman of too good a stock not to be 
honest,’’ said Chiverni; ‘‘ beside, that letter is a sufficient 
pledge.”’ 

‘“‘And what answer does the Connétable send to these 
gentlemen ?’’ 

‘‘ He says the King is his master, and he awaits his orders. 
On this reply, the cardinal, to prevent any resistance, will pro- 
pose to appoint his brother lieutenant-general of the realm.’’ 

‘¢So soon !”’ exclaimed Catherine in dismay. ‘‘ Well, and 
did Monsieur de |’Hépital give you any further message for 
me?!’ 

‘¢ He told me, madame, that you alone can stand between 
the throne and Messieurs de Guise.”’ 

‘¢But does he suppose that I will use the Huguenots as a 
means of defense ?”’ 

‘Oh, madame,”’ cried Chiverni, surprised by her perspica- 
city, ‘‘we never thought of placing you in such a difficult 
position.”’ 

‘‘Did he know what a position I am in?’’ asked the 
Queen calmly. 

‘¢Pretty nearly. He thinks you made a dupe’s bargain 
when, on the death of the late King, you accepted for your 
share the fragments saved from the ruin of Madame Diane. 
The Messieurs de Guise thought they had paid their debt to 
the Queen by gratifying the woman.’’ 

‘¢Yes,’’ said Catherine, looking at the two Gondis, ‘I 
made a great mistake there.”’ 

7 


98 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘‘A mistake the gods might make!’’ replied Charles de 
Gondi. 

‘¢Gentlemen,’’ said the Queen, ‘‘ if I openly take up the 
cause of the Reformers, I shall be the slave of a party.”’ 

‘¢ Madame,’’ said Chiverni eagerly, ‘‘I entirely agree with 
you. You must make use of them, but not let them make use 
of you.” 

‘‘Although, for the moment, your strength lies there,’’ said 
Charles de Gondi, ‘‘ we must not deceive ourselves ; success 
and failure are equally dangerous !”’ 

‘¢T know it,’’ said the Queen. ‘‘ One false move will be a 
pretext eagerly seized by the Guises to sweep me off the 
board !’’ 

‘¢A Pope’s niece, the mother of four Valois, the Queen of 
France, the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the 
Huguenots, an Italian and a Catholic, the aunt of Leo X.— 
can you form an alliance with the Reformation?’’ asked 
Charles de Gondi. 

‘On the other hand,’’ Albert replied, ‘‘ is not seconding 
the Guises consenting to usurpation? You have to deal with 
a race that looks to the struggle between the church and the 
Reformation to give them a crown for the taking. You may 
avail yourself of Huguenot help without abjuring the faith.”’ 

‘Remember, madame, that your family, which ought to be 
wholly devoted to the King of France, is at this moment in 
the service of the King of Spain,’’ said Chiverni. ‘‘ And it 
would go over to the Reformation to-morrow if the Refor- 
mation could make the Duke of Florence King!”’ 

‘*T am very well inclined to give the Huguenots a helping 
hand for a time,’’ said Catherine, ‘‘ were it only to be re- 
venged on that soldier, that priest, and that woman!”’ 

And with an Italian glance, her eye turned on the Duke and 
the cardinal, and then to the upper rooms of the castle where 
her son lived and Mary Stewart. <‘‘ Those three snatched the 
reins of government from my hands,’’ she went on, ‘‘ when I 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 99 


had waited for them long enough while that old woman held 
them in my place.”’ 

She jerked her head in the direction of Chenonceaux, the 
castle she had just exchanged for Chaumont with Diane de 
Poitiers. ‘‘Ma,’’ she said in Italian, ‘‘it would seem that 
these gentry of the Geneva bands have not wit enough to 
apply to me! On my honor, I cannot go to meet them! 
And not one of you would dare to carry them a message.” 
She stamped her foot. ‘‘I hoped you might have met the 
hunchback at Ecouen,” she said to Chiverni. ‘‘He has 
brains.”’ 

‘¢ He was there, madame,’’ replied Chiverni, ‘‘ but he could 
not induce the Connétable to join him. Monsieur de Mont- 
morency would be glad enough to overthrow the Guises, 
who obtained his dismissal; but he will have nothing to do 
with heresy.’’ 

‘‘And who, gentlemen, is to crush these private whims 
‘that are an offense to royalty? By heaven! these nobles 
must be made to destroy each other—as Louis XI. made 
them, the greatest of your kings. In this kingdom there 
are four or five parties and my son’s is the weakest of them 
E 1) Baa 

‘¢ The Reformation is an idea,’’ remarked Charles de Gondi, 
‘¢and the parties crushed by Louis XI. were based only on 
interest.’’ 

‘There is always an idea to back up interest,’’ replied 
Chiverni. ‘‘In Louis XI.’s time the idea was called the 
Great Fief!’’ 

‘*Use heresy as an axe,’’ said Albert de Gondi. ‘* You 
will not incur the odium of executions.’’ 

‘‘Ha!’’ said the Queen, ‘but I know nothing of the 
strength or the schemes of these folk, and I cannot commu- 
nicate with them through any safe channel. If I were found 
out in any such conspiracy, either by the Queen, who watches 
me as if I were an infant in arms, or by my two gaolers, who 


” 


100 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


let no one come into the castle, I should then be banished 
the country, and taken back to Florence under a formidable 
escort captained by some ruffianly Guisard! Thank you, 
friends! Oh, daughter-in-law! I hope you maysome day 
be a prisoner in your own house; then you will know what 
you have inflicted on me! ”’ 

‘Their schemes!’’ exclaimed Chiverni. ‘The Grand 
Master and the cardinal know them; but those two foxes will 
not tell. If you, madame, can make them tell, I will devote 
myself to you, and come to an understanding with the Prince 
de Condé.”’ 

‘¢Which of their plans have they failed to conceal from 
you?’’ asked the Queen, glancing toward the brothers de 
Guise. 

‘‘Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-André 
have just had their orders, of which we know nothing; but 
the Grand Master is concentrating his best troops on the left 
bank, it would seem. Within a few days you will find your- 
self at Amboise. The Grand Master came to this terrace to 
study the position, and he does not think Blois favorable to 
his private schemes. Well, then, what does he want?’’ said 
Chiverni, indicating the steep cliffs that surround the castle. 
‘©The Court could nowhere be safer from sudden attack than 
it is: here.”’ 

‘¢ Abdicate or govern,’’ said Albert de Gondi in the 
Queen’s ear as she stood thinking. 

A fearful expression of suppressed rage flashed across the 
Queen’s handsome ivory-pale face. She was not yet forty, 
and she had lived for twenty-six years in the French Court, 
absolutely powerless, she who, ever since she had come there, 
had longed to play the leading part. 

‘¢ Never so long as this son lives! His wife has bewitched 
him! ”’ 

After a short pause these terrible words broke from her in 
the language of Dante. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 101 


Catherine’s exclamation had its inspiration in a strange 
prediction, spoken a few days before at the Castle of Chau- 
mont, on the opposite bank of the Loire, whither she had 
gone with her astrologer Ruggieri to consult a famous sooth- 
sayer. ‘This woman was brought to meet her by Nostradamus, 
the chief of those physicians who in that great sixteenth cen- 
tury believed in the occult sciences, with Ruggieri, Cardan, 
Paracelsus, and many more. This fortune-teller, of whose life 
history has no record, had fixed the reign of Francis II. at 
one year’s duration. 

*¢ And what is your opinion of all this?’’ Catherine asked 
Chiverni. 

‘¢There will be fighting,’’ said the cautious gentleman. 
‘¢ The King of Navarre fe 

‘*Oh! say the Queen !’’ Catherine put in. 

‘‘Very true, the Queen,’’ said Chiverni, smiling, ‘‘ has 
made the Prince de Condé the chief of thé Reformed party ; 
he, as a younger son, may dare much; and Monsieur le Cardi- 
nal talks of sending for him to come here.”’ 

‘* If only he comes!’’ cried the Queen, ‘‘ I am saved!”’ 

So it will be seen that the leaders of the great Reforming 
movement had been right in thinking of Catherine as an ally. 

‘* This is the jest of it,’’ said the Queen; ‘‘ the Bourbons 
are tricking the Huguenots, and Master Calvin, de Béze, and 
the rest are cheating the Bourbons; but shall we be strong 
enough to take in the Huguenots, the Bourbons, and the 
Guises? In front of three such foes we are justified in feeling 
our pulse,’’ said she. 

‘‘ They have not the King,’’ replied Albert. © ‘*‘ You must 
always win, having the King on your side.”’ 

‘‘ Malediction, Mary!’’ said Catherine, between her teeth. 

‘©The Guises are already thinking of diverting the affec- 
tions of the middle-class,’’ said Birague. 





The hope of snatching the Crown had not been premedi- 


102 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


tated by the two heads of the refractory House of Guise ; 
there was nothing to justify the project or the hope; circum- 
stances suggested such audacity. The two cardinals and the 
two Balafrés were, as it happened, four ambitious men, superior 
in political gifts to any of the men about them. Indeed, the 
family was only subdued at last by Henri IV., himself a leader 
of faction, brought up in the great school of which Catherine 
and the Guises were the teachers—and he had profited by 
their lessons. 

At this time these two brothers were the arbiters of the 
greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that carried 
through in England under Henry VIII., which had resulted 
from the invention of printing. They were the enemies of 
the Reformation, the power was in their hands, and they 
meant to stamp out heresy ; but Calvin, their opponent, though 
less famous than Luther, was a stronger man. Calvin saw 
government where Luther had only seen dogma. Where the 
burly, beer-drinking, uxorious German fought with the devil, 
flinging his inkstand at the fiend, the man of Picardy, frail 
and unmarried, dreamed of plans of campaign, of directing 
battles, of arming princes, and of raising whole nations by 
disseminating republican doctrines in the hearts of the middle- 
classes, so as to make up, by increased progress in the spirit 
of nations, for his constant defeats on the battlefield. 

The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise knew 
quite as well as Philip II. and the Duke of Alva where the 
Monarchy was aimed at, and how close the connection was 
between Catholicism and sovereignty. Charles V., intoxi- 
cated with having drunk too deeply of Charlemagne’s cup, 
and trusting too much in the strength of his rule, for he be- 
lieved that he and Soliman might divide the world between 
them, was not at first conscious that his front was attacked ; 
as soon as Cardinal Granvelle showed him the extent of the 
festering sore, he abdicated. 

The Guises had a startling conception: they would extin- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 103 


guish heresy with a single blow. They tried to strike that 
blow for the first time at Amboise, and they made a second 
attempt on Saint-Bartholomew’s Day; this time they were in 
accord with Catherine de’ Medici, enlightened as she was by 
the flames of twelve years’ wars, and yet more by the ominous 
word ‘‘ Republic ’’ spoken and even published at a later date 
by the writers of the Reformation, whose ideas Lecamus, the 
typical citizen of Paris, had already understood. The two 
Princes, on the eve of striking a fatal blow to the heart of the 
nobility, in order to cut it off from the first from a religious 
party whose triumph would be its ruin, were now discussing 
the means of announcing their stroke of policy to the King, 
while Catherine was conversing with her four counselors. 

‘¢ Jeanne d’Albret knew what she was doing when she pro- 
claimed herself the protectress of the Huguenots! She has 
in the Reformation a battering-ram which she makes good 
play with!’’ said the Grand Master, who had measured the 
depth of the Queen of Navarre’s scheming. 

Jeanne d’Albret was, in point of fact, one of the cleverest 
personages of her time. 

‘Théodore de Béze is at Nérac, having taken Calvin’s 
orders.”’ 

‘¢What men those common folk can lay their hands on!”’ 
cried the Duke. 

«Ay, we have not a man on our side to match that fellow 
la Renaudie,’’ said the cardinal. ‘‘ He isa perfect Catiline.”’ 

‘Men like him always act on their own account,’’ replied 
the Duke. ‘‘Did not I see la Renaudie’s value? I loaded 
him with favors, I helped him to get away when he was con- 
demned by the Bourgogne Parlement, I got him back into 
France by obtaining a revision of his trial, and I intended to 
do all I could for him, while he was plotting a diabolical con- 
spiracy against us. The rascal has effected an alliance between 
the German Protestants and the heretics in France by smooth- 
ing over the discrepancies of dogma between Luther and 


104 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


Calvin. He has won over the disaffected nobles to the cause 
of the Reformation without asking them to abjure Catholicism. 
So long ago as last year he had thirty commanders on his side! 
He was everywhere at once: at Lyons, in Languedoc, at 
Nantes. Finally, he drew up the articles settled in Council 
and, distributed throughout Germany, in which theologians 
declare that it is justifiable to use force to get the King out of 
our hands, and this is being disseminated in every town. 
Look for him where you will, you will nowhere find him! 

‘* Hitherto I have shown him nothing but kindness! We 
shall have to kill him like a dog, or to make a bridge of gold 
for him to cross and come into our house.”’ 

‘“‘ Brittany and Languedoc, the whole kingdom, indeed, is 
being worked upon to give us a deadly shock,”’ said the car- 
dinal. ‘‘ After yesterday’s festival, I spent the rest of the 
night in reading all the information sent me by my priest- 
hood ; but no one is involved but some impoverished gentle- 
men and artisans, people who may be either hanged or left 
alive, it matters not which. The Colignys and the Condés 
are not yet visible, though they hold the threads of the con- 
spiracy.”’ 

‘¢ Ay,’’ said the Duke; ‘‘and as soon as that lawyer Aven- 
elles had let the cat out of the bag, I told Braguelonne to 
give the conspirators their head: they have no suspicions, 
they think they can surprise us, and then perhaps the leaders 
will show themselves. My advice would be that we should 
‘ allow ourselves to be beaten for forty-eight hours i 

‘« That would be half-an-hour too long,’’ said the cardinal 
in alarm. 

‘* How brave you are! ’’ retorted le Balafré. 

The cardinal went on with calm indifference— 

‘¢ Whether the Prince de Condé be implicated or not, if 
we are assured that he is the leader, cut off his head. What 
we want for that business is judges rather than soldiers, and 
there will never be any lack of judges! Victory in the 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 105 


Supreme Court is always more certain than on the field of 
battle, and costs less.’’ 

‘‘T am quite willing,’’ replied the Duke. ‘‘ But do you 
believe that the Prince de Condé is powerful enough to in- 
spire such audacity in those who are sent on first to attack us? 
Is there not——?’’ 

‘The King of Navarre,’’* said the cardinal. 

‘<A gaby who bows low in my presence,”’ replied the Duke. 
‘¢ That Florentine woman’s graces must have blinded you, I 
think uF 

‘“‘Oh, I have thought of that already,’’ said the prelate. 
‘‘If I aim at a gallant intimacy with her, is it not that I may 
read to the bottom of her heart ?’”’ 

‘‘She has no heart,’’ said his brother sharply. ‘‘ She is 
even more ambitious than we are.’’ 

‘¢ You area brave commander,”’ said the cardinal; ‘‘ but, take 
my word for it, our skirts are very near touching, and I made 
‘Mary Stewart watch her narrowly before you even suspected 
her. Catherine has no more religion in her than my shoe. 
If she is not the soul of the conspiracy, it is not for lack of 
good-will ; but we will draw her out and see how far she will 
support us. ‘Till now I know for certain that she has not 
held any communication with the heretics.”’ 

‘It is time that we should lay everything before the King, 
and the Queen-mother, who knows nothing,”’ said the Duke, 
«and that is the only proof of her innocence. La Renaudie 
will understand from my arrangements that we are warned. 
Last night Nemours must have been following up the detach- 
ments of the Reformed party, who were coming in by the 
cross-roads, and the conspirators will be compelled to attack 
us at Amboise ; I will let them all in. Here,’ and he pointed 
to the three steep slopes of rock on which the Chateau de 
Blois is built, just as Chiverni had done a moment since, ‘‘ we 
should have a fight with no result; the Huguenots could 


* Husband of Queen Margaret. 





106 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICL 


come and go at will. Blois is a hall with four doors, while 
Amboise is a sack.”’ 

‘*T will not leave the Florentine Queen,”’ said the cardinal. 

‘‘ We have made one mistake,’’ remarked the Duke, play- 
ing with his dagger, tossing it in the air, and catching it 
again by the handle; ‘‘ we ought to have behaved to her as 
to the Reformers, giving her liberty to move, so as to take 
her in the act.”’ 

The cardinal looked at his brother for a minute, shaking 
his head. 

‘¢ What does Pardaillan want ?’’ the Duke exclaimed, seeing 
this young gentleman coming along the terrace. Pardaillan 
was to become famous for his fight with la Renaudie, in which 
both were killed. 

‘* Monseigneur, a youth sent here by the Queen’s furrier is 
at the gate and says that he has a set of ermine to deliver to 
her majesty. Is he to be admitted ?”’ 

**'To be sure; an ermine surcoat she spoke of but yester- 
day,’’ said the cardinal. <‘‘ Let the store-clerk in. She will 
need the mantle for her journey by the Loire.’’ 

‘* Which way did he come, that he was not stopped before 
reaching the gate?’’ asked the Grand Master. 

“IT do not know,’’ said Pardaillan. 

‘‘I will go to see him in the Queen’s room,’ said le 
Balafré. ‘Tell him to await her /ever in the guardroom. 
But, Pardaillan, is he young ?”’ 

‘Yes, monseigneur ; he says he is Lecamus’ son.’’ 

** Lecamus is a good Catholic,’’ said the cardinal, who, like 
the Duke, was gifted with a memory like Ceesar’s. ‘‘ The 
priest of Saint-Pierre aux Beoeufs trusts him, for he is officer 
of the peace for the Palace.’’ 

‘‘Make this youth chat with the captain of the Scotch 
Guard, all the same,’’ said the Grand Master, with an 
emphasis which gave the words a very pointed meaning. 
*¢ But Ambroise is at the castle; through him we shall know 





wara) y Ce 





“WE HAVE MADE ONE MISTAKE,’ REMARKED THEE DUKE, 
PLAYING WITH HIS DAGGER. 








ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC. 107 


at once if he really is the son of Lecamus, who was formerly 
his very good friend, Ask for Ambroise Paré.”’ 

At this moment the Queen came toward the brothers, who 
hurried to meet her with marks of respect, in which Catherine 
never failed to discern deep irony. 

‘¢Gentlemen,”’ said she, ‘‘ will you condescend to inform 
me of what is going on? Is the widow of your late sover- 
eign of less account in your esteem than Messieurs de Vieille- 
ville, Birague, and Chiverni?’’ 

‘‘Madame,”’ said the cardinal, with an air of gallantry, 
‘‘our first duty as men, before all matters of politics, is not 
to alarm ladies by false rumors. This morning, indeed, we 
have had occasion to confer on State affairs. You will pardon 
my brother for having in the first instance given orders on 
purely military matters which must be indifferent to you—the 
really important points remain to be discussed. If you ap- 
prove, we will all attend the Zever of the King and Queen; it 
is close on the hour.’”’ 

‘¢Why, what is happening, Monsieur le Grand Maitre ?”’ 
asked Catherine, affecting terror. 

‘‘The Reformation, madame, is no longer a mere heresy ; 
it is a party which is about to take up arms and seize the 
King.” 

Catherine, with the cardinal, the Duke, and the gentlemen, 
made their way toward the staircase by the corridor, which 
was crowded with courtiers who had not the right of admis- 
sion, and who ranged themselves against the wall. 

Gondi, who had been studying the Princes of Lorraine 
while Catherine was conversing with them, said in good Tus- 
can and in Catherine’s ear these two words, which became by- 
words, and which express one aspect of that royally powerful 
nature— 

‘‘ Odiate e aspettate !’’ (Hate and wait.) 

Pardaillan, who had delivered to the officer on guard at the 
gatehouse the order to admit the messenger from the Queen’s 


108 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


furrier, found Christophe standing outside the portico and 
staring at the facade built by good King Louis XII., whereon 
there was at that time an even more numerous array of sculp- 
tured figures of the coarsest buffoonery—if we may judge by 
what has survived. The curious will detect, for instance, a 
figure of a woman carved on the capital of one of the columns 
of the gateway holding up her skirts, and saucily exhibit- 
ing ‘‘what Brunel displayed to Marphise’’ to a burly monk 
crouching in the capital of the corresponding column at the 
other jamb of this gate, above which once stood a statue of 
Louis XII. Several of the windows of this front, ornamented 
in this grotesque taste, and now unfortunately destroyed, 
amused, or seemed to amuse, Christophe, whom the gunners 
of the Guard were already pelting with their pleasantries. 

‘* He would like to be lodged there, he would,”’ said the 
sergeant-at-arms, patting his store of charges for his musket, 
which hung from his belt in the sugar-loaf-shaped cartridges. 

‘* Halloo, you from Paris, you never saw so much before !’’ 
said a soldier. 

‘He recognizes good King Louis! ’’ said another. 

Christophe affected not to hear them, and tried to look even 
more helplessly amazed, so that his look of blank stupidity was 
an excellent recommendation to Pardaillan. 

“The Queen is not yet risen,’’ said the young officer. 
‘*Come and wait in the guardroom.”’ 

Christophe slowly followed Pardaillan. He purposely lin- 
gered to admire the pretty covered balcony with an arched 
front, where, in the reign of Louis XII., the courtiers could 
wait under cover till the hour of reception if the weather was 
bad, and where at this moment some of the gentlemen at- 
tached to the Guises were grouped ; for the staircase, still so 
well preserved, which led to their apartments is at the end of 
that gallery, in a tower of which the architecture is greatly 
admired by the curious. 

“Now, then! have you come here to study graven images?”’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC. 109 


cried Pardaillan, seeing Lecamus riveted in front of the ele- 
gant stonework of the outer parapet which unites—or, if you 
will, separates—the columns of each archway. 

Christophe followed the young captain to the grand stair- 
case, not without glancing at this almost Moorish-looking 
structure from top to bottom with an expression of ecstasy. 
On this fine morning the court was full of captains-at-arms and 
of courtiers chatting in groups; and their brilliant costumes 
gave life to the scene, in itself so bright, for the marvels of 
the noble architecture that decorated the facade were still 
quite new. 

‘¢Come in here,’’ said Pardaillan to Lecamus, signing to 
him to follow him through the carved door on the second 
floor, which was thrown open by a sentry on his recognizing 
Pardaillan. 

Christophe’s amazement may easily be imagined on entering 
this guardroom, so vast that the military genius of our day 
has cut it across bya partition to form two rooms. It extends, © 
in fact, both on the third floor, where the King lived, and on 
the second, occupied by the Queen-mother, for a third of the 
length of the front toward the court, and is lighted by two 
windows to the left and two to the right of the famous stair- 
case. The young captain made his way toward the door 
leading to the King’s room, which opened out of this hall, 
and desired one of the pages-in-waiting to tell Madame Dayelle, 
one of the Queen’s ladies, that the furrier was in the guard- 
room with her surcoats. 

At a sign from Pardaillan, Christophe went to stand by the 
side of an officer seated on a low stool in the corner of a 
chimney-place as large as his father’s shop, at one end of this 
vast hall opposite another exactly like it at the otherend. In 
talking with this gentleman, Christophe succeeded in interest- 
ing him by telling him the trivial details of his trade; and he 
seemed so completely the craftsman that the officer volun- 
teered this opinion to the captain of the Scotch Guard, who 


112 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


before the end of the year, under the name of Charles IX., 
at the age of ten was excessively shy. The Duc d’Anjou and 
the Duc d’Alencon, his two brothers, and the infant- Princess 
Marguerite, who became the wife of Henri IV., were still too 
young to appear at Court, and remained in their mother’s 
apartments. The Duc d’Orléans, richly dressed in the fashion 
of the time, in silk trunk hose, a doublet of cloth of gold, 
brocaded with flowers in black, and a short cloak of em- 
broidered velvet, all black, for he was still in mourning for 
the late King his father, bowed to the two elder ladies, and 
joined the group of his mother’s maids of honor. Strongly 
disliking the Guisards (the adherents of the Guises), he re- 
plied coldly to the Duchess’ greeting, and went to lean his 
elbow on the back of the Countess Fieschi’s tall chair. 

His tutor, Monsieur de Cypierre, one of the finest charac- 
_ ters of that age, stood behind him asa shield. Amyot, in a 
simple abbé’s gown, also attended the Prince; he was his 
instructor as well as being the teacher of the three other royal 
children, whose favor was afterward so advantageous to him. 

Between this chimney-place ‘‘of honor’’ and that at the 
farther end of the hall—where the Guards stood in groups 
with their captain, a few courtiers, and Christophe carrying 
his box—the Chancellor Olivier, 1’ H6pital’s patron and _ pre- 
decessor, in the costume worn ever since by the chancellors 
of France, was walking to and fro with Cardinal de Tournon, 
who had just arrived from Rome, and with whom he exchanged 
a few phrases in murmurs. On them was centred the general 
attention of the gentlemen packed against the wall dividing 
the hall from the King’s bedroom, standing like a living tap- 
estry against the rich figured hangings. In spite of the serious 
state of affairs, the Court presented the same appearance as 
every Court must, in every country, at every time, and in the 
midst of the greatest perils. Courtiers always talk of the most 
trivial subjects while thinking of the gravest, jesting while 
watching every physiognomy, and, considering questions of 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 113 


love and marriage with heiresses in the midst of the most 
sanguinary catastrophes. 

‘*What did you think of yesterday’s féte?’’ asked Bour- 
deilles, the Lord of Brantéme, going up to Mademoiselle de 
Piennes, one of the elder Queen’s maids of honor. 

‘*Monsieur du Baif and Monsieur du Bellay had had the 
most charming ideas,’’ said she, pointing to the two gentle- 
men who had arranged everything, and who were standing 
close at hand. ‘‘I thought it in atrocious taste,’’ she added 
in a whisper. 

**You had no part in it?’’ said Miss Lewiston from the 
other side. 

“What are you reading, madame ?”’ said Amyot to Madame 
Fieschi. 

**‘Amadis de Gaule,’ by the Seigneur des Essarts, purveyor- 
in-ordinary to the King’s Artillery.’’ 

‘¢ A delightful work,’’ said the handsome girl, who became 
famous as la Fosseuse, when she was lady-in-waiting to Queen 
Margaret of Navarre. 

‘¢ The style is quite new,’’ remarked Amyot. ‘Shall you 
adopt such barbarisms?’’ he asked, turning to Brantéme. 

‘The ladies like it! What is to be said?”’ cried Bran- 
t6éme, going forward to bow to Madame de Guise, who had in 
her hand Boccaccio’s ‘‘ Famous Ladies.” ‘‘ There must be 
some ladies of your House there, madame,”’ said he. ‘‘ But 
Master Boccaccio’s mistake was that he did not live in these 
days; he would have found ample matter to enlarge his 
volumes.’’ 

‘¢ How clever Monsieur de Brantéme is!’’ said the beauti- 
ful Mademoiselle de Limeuil to the Countess Fieschi. ‘* He 
came first to us, but he will stay with the Guises.”’ 

‘‘Hush!’’ said Madame Fieschi, looking at the fair Limeuil. 
‘¢ Attend to what concerns you . 

The young lady turned to the door. She was expecting 


Sardini, an Italian nobleman, who was subsequently made to 
‘ 4 





114 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


marry her after a little accident that overtook her in the 
Queen’s dressing-room, and which procured her the honor of 
having a queen for her midwife. 

‘‘ By Saint Alipantin, Mademoiselle Davila seems to grow 
prettier every morning,’’ said Monsieur de Robertet, Secretary 
of State, as he bowed to the Queen-mother’s ladies. 

The advent of the secretary of State, though he was exactly 
as important asa Cabinet Minister in these days, made no 
sensation whatever. 

“‘If you think that, monsieur, do lend me the epigram 
against the Messieurs de Guise; I know you have it,’’ said 
Mademoiselle Davila to Robertet. 

‘‘T have it no longer,’”’ replied the secretary, going across 
to speak to Madame de Guise. 

‘*T have it,’’ said the Comte de Grammont to Mademoiselle 
Davila; ‘* but I will lend it you only on one condition.”’ 

‘¢ On condition ? For shame!’’ said Madame Fieschi. 

“* You do not know what I want,’’ replied Grammont. 

‘Oh, that is easy to guess,’’ said la Limeuil. 

The Italian custom of calling ladies, as French peasants call 
their wives, /a Such-an-one, was at that time the fashion at 
the Court of France. 

**You are mistaken,’’ the Count replied eagerly; ‘‘ what I 
ask is that a letter should be delivered to Mademoiselle de 
Matha, one of the maids on the other side—a letter from my 
cousin de Jarnac.’’ 

“Do not compromise my maids; I will give it to her my- 
self,’’ said the Countess Fieschi. ‘‘ Have you heard any news 
of what is going on in Flanders?’’ she asked Cardinal de 
Tournon. ‘Monsieur d’Egmont is at some new pranks, it 
would seem.”’ 

‘“‘He and the Prince of Orange,’’ said Cypierre, with a 
highly expressive shrug. 

“The Duke of Alva and Cardinal de Granvelle are going 
there, are they not, monsieur?’’ asked Amyot of Cardinal de 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’. MEDICI. 115 


Tournon, who stood, uneasy and gloomy, between the two 
groups after his conversation with the chancellor. 

‘‘We, happily, are quiet, and have to defy heresy only on 
the stage,’’ said the young Duke, alluding to the part he had 
played the day before, that of a knight subduing a hydra with 
the word ‘‘ Reformation ”’ on its brow. 

Catherine de’ Medici, agreeing on this point with her 
daughter-in-law, had allowed a theatre to be constructed in 
the great hall, which was subsequently used for the meetings 
of the States at Blois, the hall between the buildings of Louis 
XII. and those of Francis I. 

The cardinal made no reply, and resumed his walk in the 
middle of the hall, talking in a low voice to Monsieur de 
Robertet and the chancellor. Many persons know nothing 
of the difficulties that secretaryships of State, now transformed 
into Cabinet Ministries, met with in the course of their estab- 
lishment, and how hard the Kings of France found it to create 
them. At that period a secretary like Robertet was merely a 
clerk, of hardly any account among the princes and magnates 
who settled the affairs of State. There were at that time no 
ministerial functionaries but the superintendent of finance, 
the chancellor, and the keeper of the king’s seals. The King 
granted a seat in the Council, by letters patent, to such of his 
subjects as might, in his opinion, give useful advice in the 
conduct of public affairs. A seat in the Council might be 
given to a president of a law court in the Parlement, to a 
bishop, to an untitled favorite. Once admitted to the Council, 
the subject strengthened his position by getting himself ap- 
pointed to one of the Crown offices to which a salary was 
attached—the government of a province, a constable’s sword, 
a marshal’s baton, the command of the Artillery, the post of 
High Admiral, the colonelcy of some military corps, the cap- 
taincy of the galleys—or often some function at Court, such 
as that of Grand Master of the household, then held by the 
Duc de Guise. 


116 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


‘Do you believe that the Duc de Nemours will marry 
Francoise ?’’ asked Madame de Guise of the Duc d’Orléans’ 
instructor. 

‘Indeed, madame, I know nothing but Latin,’ 
reply. 

This made those smile who were near enough to hear it. 
Just then the seduction of Frangoise de Rohan by the Duc de 
Nemours was the theme of every conversation ; but as the Duc 
de Nemours was cousin to the King, and also allied to the 
House of Valois through his mother, the Guises regarded him 
as seduced rather than as a seducer. The influence of the 
House of Rohan was, however, so great, that after Francis 
II.’s death the Duc de Nemours was obliged to quit France in 
consequence of the lawsuit brought against him by the Rohans, 
which was compromised by the offices of the Guises. His 
marriage to the Duchesse de Guise, after Poltrot’s assassina- 
tion, may account for the Duchess’ question to Amyot, by 
explaining some rivalry, no doubt, between her and Made- 
moiselle de Rohan. 

‘‘Look, pray, at that party of malcontents,’’ said the 
Comte de Grammont, pointing to Messieurs de Coligny, Car- 
dinal de Chatillon, Danville, Thoré, Moret, and several other 
gentlemen suspected of meddling in the Reformation, who 
were standing all together between two windows at the lower 
end of the hall. 

‘‘The Huguenots are on the move,”’ said Cypierre. ‘‘ We 
know that Théodore de Béze is at Nérac to persuade the 
Queen of Navarre to declare herself on their side by publicly 
renouncing the Catholic faith,’’ he added, with a glance at 
the Bailli d’Orléans, who was chancellor to the Queen of 
Navarre, and a keen observer of the Court. 

‘* She will do it,’” said the Bailli d’Orléans drily. 

This personage, the Jacques Cceur of his day, and one of 
the richest middle-class men of his time, was named Groslot, 
and was envoy from Jeanne d’Albret to the French Court. 


? 


was the 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 117 


‘¢Do you think so?’’ said the Chancellor of France to the 
Chancellor of Navarre, quite understanding the full import 
of Groslot’s remark. 

**Don’t you know,”’ said the rich provincial, ‘‘that the 
Queen of Navarre has nothing of the woman in her but her 
sex? She is devoted to none but manly things; her mind is 
strong in important matters and her heart undaunted by the 
greatest adversities.”’ 

‘Monsieur le Cardinal,’’ said the Chancellor Olivier to 
Monsieur de Tournon, who had heard Groslot, ‘‘ what do you 
think of such boldness ?”’ 

**The Queen of Navarre does well to choose for her chan- 
cellor a man from whom the House of Lorraine will need to 
borrow, and who offers the King his house when there is a talk 
of moving to Orleans,’’ replied the cardinal. 

The chancellor and the cardinal looked at each other, not 
daring to speak their thoughts ; but Robertet expressed them, 
for he thought it necessary to make a greater display of de- 
votion to the Guises than these great men, since he was so far 
beneath them. 

‘<Tt is most unfortunate that the House of Navarre, instead 
of abjuring the faith of their fathers, do not abjure the spirit 
of revenge and rebellion inspired by the Connétable de 
Bourbon. We shall see a repetition of the wars of the 
Armagnacs and the Bourguignons.”’ 

‘*No,’’ said Groslot, ‘‘ for there is something of Louis XI. 
in the Cardinal de Lorraine.”’ 

*¢ And in Queen Catherine too,’’ observed Robertet. 

At this moment Madame Dayelle, Mary Stewart’s favorite 
waiting-woman, crossed the room and went to the Queen’s 
chamber. The appearance of the waiting-woman made a 
little stir. 

‘¢ We shall be admitted directly,’’ said Madame Fieschi. 

‘¢T do not think so,’’ said the Duchesse de Guise. ‘‘ Their 
majesties will come out, for a State Council is to be held.’’ 


118 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


La Dayelle slipped into the royal chamber after scratching 
at the door, a deferential custom introduced by Catherine de’ 
Medici and adopted by the French Court. 

‘©What is the weather like, my dear Dayelle?’’ asked 
Queen Mary, putting her fair, fresh face out between the 
curtains. 

«¢Oh ! madame——’ 

‘‘ What is the matter, Dayelle? You might have the bow- 
men at your heels - 

‘‘Oh! madame—is the King still sleeping ?’’ 

SN esos" 

‘¢We are to leave the castle, and Monsieur le Cardinal 
desired me to tell you so, that you might suggest it to the 
King.”’ 

‘Do you know why, my good Dayelle ?”’ 

‘The Reformers mean to carry you off.”’ 

‘¢ Oh, this new religion leaves me no peace! I dreamed 
last night that I was in prison—I who shall wear the united 
crowns of the three finest kingdoms in the world.”’ 

‘‘ Indeed ! but, madame, it was only a dream.”’ 

‘‘ Carried off! That would be rather amusing. But for 
the sake of religion, and by heretics—horrible ! ’”’ 

The Queen sprang out of bed and seated herself in front of 
the fireplace in a large chair covered with red velvet, after 
wrapping herself in a loose black velvet gown handed to her 
by Dayelle, which she tied about the waist with a silken cord. 
Dayelle lighted the fire, for the early May mornings are cool 
on the banks of the Loire. 

‘*Then did my uncles get this news in the course of the 
night ?’’ the Queen inquired of Dayelle, with whom she was 
on familiar terms. 

‘¢ Early this morning Messieurs de Guise were walking on 
the terrace to avoid being overheard, and received there some 
messengers arriving in hot haste from various parts of the 
kingdom where the Reformers are busy. Her highness the 


, 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 119 


Queen-mother went out with her Italians hoping to be con- 
sulted, but she was not invited to join the little council.”’ 

‘¢ She must be furious.’’ . 

‘** All the more so because she had a little wrath left over 
from yesterday,’’ replied Dayelle. ‘* They say she was far 
from rejoiced by the sight of your majesty in your dress of 
woven gold and your pretty veil of tan-colored crepe a 

*¢ Leave us now, my good Dayelle; the King is waking. 
Do not let any one in, not even those who have the entrée. 
There are matters of State in hand and my uncles will not 
disturb us.” 

_ **Why, my dear Mary, are you out of bed already? Is it 
daylight ?’’ said the young King, rousing himself. 

‘«*« My dear love, while we were quietly sleeping, malignants 
have been wide awake, and compel us to leave this pleasant 
home.”’ 

‘What do you mean by malignants, my sweetheart? Did 
we not have the most delightful festival last evening, but for 
the Latin which those gentlemen insisted on dropping into 
our good French ?’”’ 

‘*Oh!’’ said Mary, ‘ that is in the best taste, and Rabelais 
brought Latin into fashion.’’ 

‘*Ah! you are so learned, and I am only sorry not to be 
able to do you honor in verse. If I were not King, I would 
take back Master Amyot from my brother, who is being made 
SO wise a 

‘*You have nothing to envy your brother for; he writes 
verses and shows them to me, begging me to show him mine. 
Be content, you are by far the best of the four, and will be as 
good a king as you are acharming lover. Indeed, that per- 
haps is the reason your mother loves you so little. But be 
easy; I, dear heart, will love you for all the world.”’ 

‘*Tt is no great merit in me to love such a perfect Queen,”’ 
said the young King. ‘‘I do not know what hindered me 
from embracing you before the whole Court last night, when 








120 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


you danced the 4ran/e* with tapers. I could see how all the 
women looked serving-wenches by you, my sweet Marie !”’ 

‘¢ For plain prose your language is charming, my dear heart: 
it is love that speaks, to be sure. And you know, my dear, 
that if you were but a poor little page, I should still love you 
just as much as I now do, and yet it is a good thing to be 
able to.say, ‘ My sweetheart is a king!’”’ 

‘‘Such a pretty arm! Why must we get dressed? I like 
to push my fingers through your soft hair and tangle your 
golden curls. Listen, pretty one; I will not allow you to let 
your women kiss your fair neck and your pretty shoulders any 
more! Iam jealous of the Scotch mists for having touched 
them.” 

‘*Will you not come to see my beloved country? The 
Scotch would love you, and there would be no rebellions, as 
there are here.”’ 

“Who rebels in our kingdom?”’ said Francois de Valois, 
wrapping himself in his gown, and drawing his wife on to his 
knee. 

‘* Yes, this is very pretty play,’’ said she, withdrawing her 
cheek from his kiss, ‘‘ But you have to reign, if you please, 
my liege.’’ 

‘Who talks of reigning? This morning I want to oe 

“Need you say ‘I want to,’ when you can do what you 
will? That is the language of neither king nor lover. How- 
ever, that is not the matter on hand—we have important busi- 
ness to attend to.’’ 

“Oh!” said the King, ‘‘it is a long time since we have 
had any business to do. Is it amusing?” 

‘« Not at all,”’ said Mary; ‘‘ we must make a move.” 

“IT will wager, my pretty one, that you have seen one of 
your uncles, who manage matters so well that, at seventeen, 
Iam aking only inname. I really know not why, since the 
first Council, I have ever sat at one; they could do everything 





* A swaying, jerky dance. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 121 


quite as well by setting a crown on my chair; I see everything 
through their eyes, and settle matters blindfold.”’ 

‘¢Indeed, monsieur,’’ said the Queen, standing up and 
assuming an air of annoyance, ‘‘ you had agreed never again 
to give me the smallest trouble on that score, but to leave my 
uncles to exercise your royal power for the happiness of your 
people. A nice people they are! Why, if you tried to govern 
them unaided, they would swallow you whole like a straw- 
berry. They need warriors to rule them—a stern master 
gloved with iron ; while you—you are a charmer whom I love 
just as you are, and should not love if you were different—do 
-you hear, my lord?’’ she added, bending down to kiss the 
boy, who seemed inclined to rebel against this speech, but 
who was mollified by the caress. 

‘*Oh, if only they were not your uncles!’’ cried Francis. 
‘¢T cannot endure that cardinal; and when he puts on his in- 

sinuating air and his submissive ways, and says to me with a 
- bow, ‘Sire, the honor of the Crown and the faith of your 
fathers are at stake, your majesty will never allow ’ and this 
and that—I am certain he toils for nothing but his cursed 
House of Lorraine.’’ 

‘‘ How well you mimic him!’’ cried the Queen. ‘ But 
why do you not make these Guises inform you of what-3 going 
forward, so as to govern by-and-by on your own account when 
you are of full age? Iam your wife, and your honor is mine. 
We will reign, sweetheart—never fear! But all will not be 
roses for us till we are free to please ourselves. ‘There is 
nothing so hard for a king as to govern! 

‘Am I the Queen now, I ask you? Do you think that 
your mother ever fails to repay me in evil for what good my 
uncles may do for the glory of your throne? And mark the ° 
difference! My uncles are great princes, descendants of 
Charlemagne, full of good-will, and ready to die for you; 
while this daughter of a leech, or a merchant, Queen of France 
by a mere chance, is as shrewish as a citizen’s wife who is not 





s 


122 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


mistress in her house. The Italian woman is provoked that she 
cannot set évery one by the ears, and she is always coming to 
me with her pale, solemn face, and then with her pinched lips 
she begins: ‘Daughter, you are the Queen ; I am only the 
second lady in the kingdom ’—she is furious, you see, dear 
heart—‘ but if I were in your place I would not wear crimson 
velvet while the Court is in mourning, and I would appear in 
pnblic with my hair plainly dressed and with no jewels, for 
what is unseemly in any lady is even more so in a queen. Nor 
would I dance myself ; I would only see others dance!’ That 
is the kind of thing she says to me.”’ 

“Qh, dear heaven!’’ cried the King, ‘‘I can hear her! 
Mercy, if she only knew hs 

‘* Why, you still quake before her. She wearies you—say 
so? We will send her away. By my faith, that she should 
deceive you might be endured, but to be so tedious——”’ 

‘‘In heaven’s name, be silent, Marie,’’ said the King, at 
once alarmed and delighted. ‘‘I would not have you lose 
her favor.’’ 

‘Never fear that she will quarrel with me, with the three 
finest crowns in the world on my head, my little King,’’ said 
Mary Stewart. ‘‘Even though she hates me for a thousand 
reasons, she flatters me, to win me from my uncles.’’ 

‘* Hates you?’’ 

**Yes, my angel! And if I had not a thousand such proofs 
as women can give each other, and such as women only can 
understand, her persistent opposition to our happy lovemaking 
would be enough. Now, is it my fault if your father could 
never endure Mademoiselle de’ Medici? In short, she likes 
me so little that you had to be quite in a rage to prevent our 
having separate sets of rooms here and at Saint-Germain. 
She declared that it was customary for the Kings and Queens 
of France. Customary! It was your father’s custom; that 
is quite intelligible. As to your grandfather, Francis, that 
good man established the practice for the convenience of his 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 123 


love affairs. So be on your guard; if we are obliged to leave 
this place, do not let the Grand Master divide us.”’ 

‘‘If we leave? But I do not intend to leave this pretty 
castle, whence we see the Loire and all the country round—a 
town at our feet, the brightest sky in the world above us, and 
these lovely gardens. Or if I go, it will be to travel with 
you in Italy and see Raphael’s pictures and Saint-Peter’s at 
Rome.”’ 

‘«* And the orange trees. Ah, sweet little King, if you could 
know how your Mary longs to walk under orange trees in 
flower and fruit! Alas! I may never see one! Oh! to hear 
an Italian song under those fragrant groves, on the shore of 
a blue sea, under a cloudless sky, and to clasp each other 
thus !——’’ 

“Let us be off,’’ said the King. 

‘* Be off!’’ cried the Grand Master, coming in. ‘Yes, 
Sire, you must be off from Blois. Pardon my boldness, but 
- circumstances overrule etiquette, and I have come to beg you 
to call a Council.’’ 

Mary and Francis had started apart on being thus taken by 
surprise, and they both wore the same expression of offended 
sovereign majesty. 

** You are too much the Grand Master, Monsieur de Guise,”’ 
said the young King, suppressing his wrath. 

“* Devil take lovers! ’’ muttered the cardinal in Catherine’s 
ear. 

‘*My son,”’ replied the Queen-mother, appearing behind 
the cardinal, ‘‘ the safety of your person is at stake as well as 
of your kingdom.”’ 

‘¢ Heresy was awake while you diene Sire,’’ said the cardinal. 

‘¢ Withdraw into the hall,’’ said the little King; ‘‘ we will 
hold a Council.” 

‘*Madame,’’ said the Duke to the Queen, ‘‘ your furrier’s 
son has come with some furs which are seasonable for your 
journey, as we shall probably ride by the Loire. But he also 


? 


124 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


wishes to speak with madame,’’ he added, turning to the 
Queen-mother. ‘‘ While the King is dressing, would you 
and her majesty dismiss him forthwith, so that this trifle may 
no further trouble us?”’ 

‘‘With pleasure,’’ replied Catherine; adding to herself, 
‘¢If he thinks to be rid of me by such tricks, he little knows 
me.’ 

The cardinal and the Duke retired, leaving the two Queens 
with the King. As he went through the guardroom to go to 
the council chamber, the Grand Master desired the usher to 
bring up the Queen’s furrier. 

When Christophe saw this official coming toward him from 
one end of the room to the other, he took him, from his 
dress, to be some one of importance, and his heart sank 
within him ; but this sensation, natural enough at the approach 
of a critical moment, became sheer terror when the usher, 
whose advance had the effect of directing the eyes of the 
whole splendid assembly to Christophe with his bundles and 
his abject looks, said to him— 

‘¢ Their highnesses the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Grand 
Master desire to speak to you in the council-room.”’ 

‘‘Has any one betrayed me?’’ was the thought of this 
hapless envoy of the Reformers. 

Christophe followed the usher, his eyes bent on the ground, 
and never looked up till he found himself in the spacious 
council-room—as large almost as the guardroom. The two 
Guises were alone, standing in front of the splendid chimney- 
place that backed against that in the guardroom, where the 
maids of honor were grouped. 

** You have come from Paris? Which road did you take?” 
the cardinal said to Christophe. 

**I came by water, monseigneur,’’ replied the lad. 

“And how did you get into Blois?’’ said the Grand 
Master. 


<¢ By the river-port, monseigneur.”’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 125 


“And no one interfered with you?”’ said the Duke, who 
was examining the young man closely. 

‘¢No, monseigneur. I told the first soldier, who made as 
though he would stop me, that I had come on duty to wait on 
the two Queens, and that my father is furrier to their majes- 
ties.”’ 

‘¢ What is doing in Paris? ’’ asked the cardinal. 

‘« They are still trying to discover the murderer who killed 
President Minard.”’ 

‘‘ Are you not the son of my surgeon’s greatest friend ?’”’ 
asked the Duc de Guise, deceived by Christophe’s expression 
of candor, now that his fears were allayed. 

‘¢ Yes, monseigneur.”’ 

The Grand Master went out, hastily lifted the curtain 
which screened the double doors of the council chamber, and 
showed his face to the crowd, among whom he looked for the 

King’s surgeon-in-chief. Ambroise Paré, standing in a corner, 
was aware of a glance shot at him by the Duke and went to 
him. Ambroise, already inclined to the Reformed religion, 
ended by adopting it; but the friendship of the Guises and 
of the French kings preserved him from the various disasters 
that befell the heretics. ‘The Duke, who felt that he owed his 
life to Ambroise Paré, had appointed him surgeon-in-chief to 
the King within a few days past. 

‘‘ What is it, monseigneur,’’ said the leech. ‘Is the King 
ill? I should not be surprised.”’ 

eoWhy ?”’ 

‘¢ The Queen is too fascinating,’’ said the surgeon. 

‘“*Ah!’’ replied the Duke, surprised. ‘‘ However, that is 
not the case,’’ he went on after a pause. ‘‘ Ambroise, I want 
you to see a friend of yours,’’ and he led him on to the thresh- 
old of the council-chamber door and pointed to Christophe. 

‘¢ Ah, to be sure,’’ cried the surgeon, holding out his hand 
to the youth. ‘‘ How is your father, my boy?”’ 

‘¢ Very well, Master Ambroise,’’ Christophe replied. 


’ 


126 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘¢ And what are you doing at Court ?’’ Paré wenton. ‘‘It 
is not your business to carry parcels; your father wants to 
make a lawyer of you. Do you want the protection of these 
two great Princes to become a pleader ?”’ 

««Why, yes, indeed,”’ replied Christophe, ‘‘but for my 
father’s sake; and if you can intercede for us, add your en- 
treaties,’’ he went on, with a piteous air, ‘‘ to obtain an order 
from Monseigneur the Grand Master for the payment of the 
moneys due to my father, for he does not know which way to 
turn as 

The cardinal and his brother looked at each other, and 
seemed to be satisfied. 

‘¢ Leave us now,’’ said the Grand Master to Ambroise with 
a nod. ‘‘And you, my friend,’’ he added to Christophe, 
‘‘settle your business quickly, and get back to Paris. My 
secretary will give you a pass, for, by heaven, the roads will 
not be pleasant to travel on!”’ 

Neither of the brothers had the slightest suspicion of the 
important interests that lay in Christophe’s hands, being now 
quite assured that he was certainly the son of Lecamus, a good 
Catholic, purveyor to the Court, and that he had come solely 
to get his money. 

“Take him around to be near the door of the Queen’s 
chamber ; she will ask for him no doubt,’’ said the cardinal 
to the surgeon. 





While the furrier’s son was being thus cross-questioned in 
the council-room, the King had left his mother and the Queen 
together, having gone into his dressing-room, which was be- 
yond a room adjoining the bedroom. 

Catherine, standing in the recess of the deep window, was 
looking out on the garden, lost in melancholy thought. She 
foresaw that one of the greatest commanders of the age, in 
the course of that morning, in the very next hour, would take 
the place of her son the King, under the terrible title of 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 127 


lieutenant-general of the kingdom. In the face of such peril 
she was alone, without a plan, without defense. Indeed, as 
she stood there in her mourning, which she had not ceased 
to wear since the death of Henri II., she might have been 
compared to a phantom, so still were her pale features as she 
stood absorbed in thought. Her black eye seemed to wander 
in the indecision for which great politicians are so often 
blamed, which in them is the result of the breadth of sight 
which enables them to see every difficulty, and to balance one 
against the other, adding up the sum-total of risk before 
taking a part. There was a ringing in her ears, a turmoil in 
her blood; but she stood there, nevertheless, calm and dig- 
nified, while gauging the depths of the political abyss beyond 
the real gulf that lay at her feet. 

Since the day when the Vidame de Chartres had been ar- 
rested, this was the second of those terrible days of which 
there were henceforth to be so many in the course of her royal 
‘career ; but she never again made a mistake in the school of 
power. Though the sceptre seemed always to fly from her 
grasp, she meant to seize it, and, in fact, did seize it, by that 
sheer force of will which had never given way to the scorn of 
her father-in-law, Francis I., and his Court—by whom, though 
Dauphiness, she had been so little thought of—nor to the con- 
stant denials of Henri II.,nor to the unresting antagonism 
of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would not have un- 
derstood this Queen in check; but Mary Stewart, so fair, so 
crafty, so clever, so girlish, and yet so omniscient, watched 
her out of the corner of her eye while affecting to warble an 
Italian air with an indifferent countenance. Without under- 
standing the tempest of ambition which brought a cold moist- 
ure to the Florentine Queen’s brow, the pretty Scotch girl, 
with her saucy face, knew that the high position of her uncle 
the Duc de Guise was filling Catherine with suppressed fury. 
Now, nothing amused her so much as watching her mother- 
in-law, whom she regarded as an intriguing adventuress, who, 


128 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


having been humbled, was always prepared for revenge. The 
face of the elder was grave and gloomy, a little cadaverous, 
by reason of the livid complexion of the Italians, which by 
daylight looks like yellow ivory, though by candlelight it is 
dazzling ; while the younger face was bright and fresh. At 
sixteen Mary Stewart had that creamy fairness for which she 
was so famous. Her bright rosy face, with clearly cut feat- 
ures, sparkled with childish mischief, very frankly expressed 
in the regular arch of her brows, the brightness of her eyes, 
and the pert smile of her pretty mouth. She had then in 
perfection that kittenish grace which nothing—neither cap- 
tivity nor the sight of the horrible block—ever completely 
quelled. 

Thus these two Queens, one in the morning, the other in 
the summer of life, were at this time a perfect contrast. 
Catherine was an imposing sovereign, an impenetrable widow, 
with no passion but the love of power. Mary was a feather- 
brained and light-hearted wife, who thought of her crowns as 
playthings. One looked forward to impending misfortunes ; 
she even had a glimpse of the murder of the Guises, guessing 
that this would be the only way to strike down men who were 
capable of raising themselves above the throne and the Parle- 
ment; she saw rivers of blood in a long struggle—the other 
little dreamed that she would herself be murdered by form of 
law. 

A curious reflection brought a little calm to the Italian 
Queen. 

“According to the soothsayer and to Ruggieri’s forecast, 
this reign is soon to end. My difficulties will not last,’’ 
thought she. : 

And thus, strange to say, an occult science, now forgotten 
—judicial astrology—was a support to Catherine at this junc- 
ture, as it was throughout her life; for the belief grew con- 
stantly from seeing the predictions of those who practiced it 
realized with the greatest exactitude. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 129 


«¢ You are very serious, madame,’’ said Mary Stewart, taking 
from Dayelle’s hands her little cap, pinched down over the 
parting of her hair with two frilled wings of handsome lace 
beyond the puffs of wavy yellow hair that shadowed her 
temples. 

The painters of the time have so amply perpetuated this 
cap, that it now belongs essentially to the Queen of Scots, 
though it was Catherine who invented it when she went into 
mourning for Henri II.; but she could not wear it with such 
good effect as her daughter-in-law, to whom it was infinitely 
more becoming. And this was not the smallest of the griev- 
ances harbored by the Queen-mother against the young 
Queen. 

“¢ Does your majesty mean that for a reproof?’’ said Cath- 
erine, turning to her daughter-in-law. 

“*T owe respect, and should not dare ”’ said the Scotch- 
woman meaningly, with a glance at Dayelle. 

Between the two Queens the favorite waiting-woman stood 
like the figure-head on a fire-dog; an approving smile might 
cost her her life. 

‘* How can I be as gay as you after losing the late King, 
and when I see my son’s kingdom on the eve of a conflagra- 
tion ?”’ 

‘¢ Politics do not much concern women,’ 
Stewart. ‘‘ Beside, my uncles are there.’’ 

These two sentences, in the circumstances, were two.poisoned 
arrows. 

‘*Let us see our furs then,’’ the Italian replied, ‘‘ and so 
turn our minds to our own business, while your uncles settle 
that of the kingdom.’”’ 

‘Oh, but.we shall attend the Council, madame; we are 
of more use there than you suppose.’’ 

‘*We?’”’ said Catherine, with feigned astonishment. ‘I, 
for my part, do not know Latin!”’ 


‘*You fancy me so learned ?’’ said Mary Stewart, with a 
9 





? 


replied Mary 


130 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


laugh. ‘‘ Nay, madame, I swear to you that at this moment 
I am studying in the hope of rivaling the Medici and of 
knowing some day how to heal the wounds of the country.”’ 

This sharp shaft pierced Catherine to the heart, for it was 
an allusion to the origin of the Medici, who were descended, 
as some said, from a leech, or, as others had it, from a rich 
drug merchant. She had no reply ready. Dayelle colored 
when her mistress looked to her for the applause which every- 
body, and even queens, expect from their inferiors when they 
have no better audience. 

‘Your witticisms, madame, cannot, unfortunately, heal 
either the maladies of the State or those of the church,’’ said 
Catherine, with calm and dignified coldness. ‘‘ My fore- 
fathers’ knowledge of such matters won them thrones; while 
you, if you persist in jesting in the midst of danger, are like 
enough to lose yours.”’ 

At this juncture Dayelle opened the door to Christophe, 
shown in by the chief physician himself after scratching at 
the door. 

The young Reformer wanted to study Catherine’s counte- 
nance, and affected a shyness, which was natural enough on 
finding himself in this place; but he was surprised by Mary’s 
eagerness. She rushed at the boxes to look at her surcoat. 

‘*Madame,”’ said Christophe, addressing Catherine. 

He turned his back on the other Queen and Dayelle, 
promptly taking advantage of the attention the two were 
devoting to the furs to strike a bold blow. 

‘*What do you want of me?’’ asked Catherine, looking 
keenly at him. 

Christophe had placed the agreement proposed by the 
Prince de Condé, with the Reformers’ plan of action and an 
account of their forces, over his heart, between his cloth jerkin 
and his shirt, wrapped inside the furrier’s bill of what Queen 
Catherine owed him. 

‘‘Madame,”’ said he, ‘‘my father is in dreadful want of 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 131 


money, and if you would condescend to look through the 
accounts,’’ he added, unfolding the paper and slipping the 
agreement under it, ‘‘ you will see that your majesty owes 
him six thousand crowns. May your goodness have pity on 
us! See, madame.”’ 

And he held out the document. 

‘‘Read it. This dates so far back as the accession of the 
late King.’’ 

Catherine was bewildered by the preamble to the address, 
but she did not lose her presence of mind; she hastily rolled 
up the paper, admiring the young man’s readiness and daring. 
She saw from these masterly tactics that he would understand 
her, so she tapped him on the head with the roll of paper, 
and said: ‘‘ You are very ill advised, my young friend, in 
handing the bill in before the furs. Learn some knowledge 
of women! You must never ask for your money until we are 
perfectly satisfied.”’ 

‘Ts that the tradition?’’ said the young Queen to her 
mother-in-law, who made no reply. 

** Ah, mesdames, excuse my father,’’ said Christophe. ‘‘If 
he had not wanted the money, you would not have your furs. 
The country is up in arms, and there is so much danger on 
the roads that only our great need induced me to come. No 
one else would risk his life.’’ 

‘¢ This lad is quite fresh,’’ said Mary Stewart, smiling. 

It is not superfluous to the better understanding of this im- 
portant little scene to remark that a surcoat was, as the name 
implies, a sort of close-fitting jacket or spencer which ladies 
wore over their dress, and which wrapped them closely, shaped 
down tothe hips. This garment protected the back, chest, 
and throat from the cold. Surcoats were lined with fur which 
turned up over the stuff, forming a more or less wide border. 
Mary Stewart while trying on her surcoat was looking at her- 
self in a large Venetian mirror, to see the effect of it at the 
back ; thus she had left her mother-in-law liberty to glance at 


182 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


the packet of papers, of which the volume might otherwise 
have excited her suspicions. 

‘¢Does a man ever speak to a lady of the dangers he has 
incurred when he is safe and sound in her presence?’’ said 
she, turning around on Christophe. 

‘¢Oh, madame, I have your account too,’’ said he, looking 
at her with well-acted simplicity. 

The young Queen looked at him from head to foot without 
taking the paper; but she observed, without drawing any con- 
clusions at the moment, that he had taken Queen Catherine’s 
bill out of his breast, and drew hers out of his pocket. Nor 
did she see in the lad’s eyes the admiration that her beauty 
won her from all the world ; but she was thinking so much of 
her surcoat that she did not at once wonder what could be 
the cause of his indifference. 

‘* Take it, Dayelle,’’ said she to the waiting-woman. ‘‘ You 
can give the account to Monsieur de Versailles (Loménie), 
and desire him, for me, to pay it.”’ 

“Indeed, madame, but if you do not give me an order 
signed by the King, or by his highness the Grand Master, 
who is at hand, your gracious promise will have no effect.”’ 

‘You are rather hastier than beseems a subject, my friend,”’ 
said Mary Stewart. ‘So you do not believe in royal prom- 
ises ?”” 

The King came in dressed in his long silk hose and trunks, 
the breeches of the time, but wore neither doublet nor cloak ; 
he had only a rich wrapper of velvet lined throughout with 
fur; for wrapper, a word of modern use, can alone describe 
the négligé of his apparel. 

‘‘Who is the rascal that doubts your word ?’’ said the 
young King, who, though at a distance, had heard his wife’s 
speech. 

The door of the King’s closet was hidden by the bed. 
This closet was subsequently called the old closet (Je Cadinet 
vieux) to distinguish it from the splendid painted closet con- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 133 


structed for Henri III. on the other side of the room adjoining 
the hall of the States-General. Henri III. hid the assassins 
in the old closet, and sent to desire the Duc de Guise to 
attend him there; while he, during the murder, remained 
concealed in the new closet, whence he emerged only to see 
his overweening subject die—a subject for whom there could 
be no prison, no tribunal, no judges, no laws in the kingdom. 
But for these dreadful events, the historian could now hardly 
identify the former uses of these rooms and halls filled with 
soldiers. A sergeant writes to his sweetheart on the spot 
where Catherine gravely considered her struggle with parties. 

‘*Come, my boy,’ said the Queen-mother; ‘‘I will see 
that you are paid. Trade must flourish, and money is its 
main sinew.”’ 

«Ay, go, my good youth,’’ said the young Queen, laugh- 
ing ; ‘‘my august mother understands matters of trade better 
than I do.’’ 

Catherine was about to leave the room without replying 
to this innuendo ; but it struck her that her indifference might 
arouse suspicions, and she retorted on her daughter-in-law— 

‘¢ And you, my dear, trade in love.’’ 

Then she went downstairs. 

*¢ Put all those things away, Dayelle. And come to the 
council-room, Sire,’’ said the young Queen to the King, en- 
chanted at having to decide the important question of the 
lieutenancy of the kingdom in her mother-in-law’s absence. 

Mary Stewart took the King’s arm. Dayelle went out first, 
speaking a word to the pages, and one of them—young 
Téligny, fated to perish miserably on the night of Saint-Bar- 
tholomew—shouted out— 

‘* The King !’’ 

On hearing the cry, the two musketeers carried arms, and 
the two pages led the way toward the council chamber be- 
tween the line of courtiers on one side and the line formed 
by the maids of honor to the two Queens on the other. All 


134 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


the members of the Council then gathered round the door of 
the hall, which was at no great distance from the staircase. 
The Grand Master, the cardinal, and the chancellor advanced 
to meet the two young sovereigns, who smiled to some of the 
maids or answered the inquiries of some of the Court favorites 
more intimate than the rest. 

The Queen, however, evidently impatient, dragged Francis 
II. on toward the vast council-room. As soon as the heavy 
thud of the arquebusses dropping on the floor again announced 
that the royal pair had gone in, the pages put on their caps, 
and the conversations in the various groups took their course 
again on the immense gravity of the business about to be dis- 
cussed. 

‘‘Chiverni was sent to fetch the connétable, and he has 
not come,”’ said one. 

‘‘There is no prince of the blood present,’’ remarked 
another. 

The chancellor and Monsieur de Tournon looked anxious. 

‘The Grand Master has sent word to the keeper of the 
seals to be sure not to fail to attend this Council; a good 
many letters patent will be issued, no doubt.’’ 

“* How is it that the Queen-mother remains below, in her 
own rooms, at such a juncture? ”’ 

‘They are going to make things hot for us,’’ said Groslot 
to Cardinal de Chatillon. 

In short, every one had something to say. Some were 
pacing the room from end to end, others were flitting round 
the maids of honor, as though it could be possible to catch a 
few words through a wall three feet thick or two doors and 
the heavy curtains that screened them. 

The King, seated at one end of the long table covered with 
blue velvet, which stood in the middle of the room, his young 
Queen in an armchair at his side, was waiting for his mother. 
Robertet was mending his pens. The two cardinals, the 
Grand Master, the chancellor, the keeper of the seals—in 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 135 


short, the whole assembly—looked at the little King, wonder- 
ing why he did not give the word for them all to be seated. 

‘*Are we to sit in council in the absence of the Queen- 
mother ?’’ the chancellor asked, addressing the young King. 

The two Guises ascribed Catherine’s absence to some cun- 
ning trick of their niece’s. Then spurred by a significant 
look, the much-daring cardinal said to the King— 

‘*Ts it your majesty’s good-will that we should proceed with- 
out madame your mother ?’’ 

Francis, not daring to have an opinion of his own, replied— 

‘¢ Gentlemen, be seated.’’ 

The cardinal briefly pointed out the dangers of the situa- 
tion. ‘This great politician, who showed astounding skill in 
this business, broached the question of the lieutenancy amid 
utter silence. The young King was, no doubt, conscious of 
an awkwardness, and guessed that his mother had a real sense 
of the rights of the Crown and a knowledge of the danger 
that threatened his power, for he replied to a direct question 
on the cardinal’s part— 

“¢ We will wait for my mother.’’ 

Enlightened by this inexplicable delay on Queen Catherine’s 
part, Mary Stewart suddenly recalled in a single flash of thought 
three incidents which were clear in her memory. In the first 
place, the bulk of the packet presented to her mother-in-law, 
which she had seen, though so inattentive at the moment (for 
a woman who seems to see nothing is still a lynx), then the 
place where Christophe had carried them to separate them 
from hers. 

‘‘ Why ?”’ she said to herself. And then she remembered 
the boy’s cold look, which she at once ascribed to the 
Reformers’ hatred of the Guises’ niece. A voice within her 
cried, ‘‘ Is he not an envoy from the Huguenots? ’”’ 

Acting, as all hasty persons do, on the first impulse, she 
exclaimed— 

‘*T myself will go and fetch my mother.”’ 


136 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


She rushed away and down the stairs, to the great amaze- 
ment of the gentlemen and ladies of the Court. She went 
down to her mother-in-law’s rooms, crossed the guardroom, 
opened the door of the bedroom as stealthily as a thief, crept 
noiselessly over the carpet as silently as a shadow, and could 
see her nowhere. ‘Then she thought she could surprise her in 
the splendid private room between the bedroom and the 
oratory. The arrangement of this oratory is perfectly recog- 
nizable to this day; the fashion of the time then allowed it to 
serve all the purposes in private life which are now served by 
a boudoir. 

By a piece of good fortune, quite unaccountable when we 
see in how squalid a state the Crown has left this castle, the 
beautiful paneling of Catherine’s closet exists to this day; in 
the fine carving the curious may still discern traces of Italian 
magnificence, and also discover the hiding- as the Queen- 
mother had contrived there. 

A somewhat exact description of these curiosities is indeed 
indispensable to a comprehension of the scene that took place 
there. The woodwork at that time consisted of about a hun- 
dred and eighty small oblong panels, of which a hundred or 
so still remain, each carved with a different design, obviously 
suggested by the most elegant Italian arabesques. The wood 
is holm-oak ; the red ground which is found under the coat of 
limewash, applied at the time of the cholera—a quite useless 
precaution—shows plainly that these panels were gilt ; and in 
spots where the whitewash has rubbed off we see that some 
portions of the design were in color—blue, red, or green— 
against a gold background. The number of these panels shows 
an evident intention to cheat investigation ; but if there could 
be a doubt, the keeper of the castle, while holding up Cath- 
erine’s memory to the execration of all living men, shows to 
visitors, at the bottom of the paneling, and on a level with the 
floor, asomewhat heavy skirting which can be raised, and under 
which there are a number of ingenious springs. By pressing 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 137 


a knob thus concealed, the Queen could open certain of these 
panels, known to her alone, behind which lay a hiding-place 
of the same oblong shape as the panels, but of varying depth. 
To this day a practiced hand would find it difficult to detect 
which of these panels would open on its invisible hinges ; and 
when the eye was diverted by the skillfully combined colors 
and gilding that covered the cracks, it is easy to imagine that 
it was impossible to discover one or two panels among nearly 
two hundred. 

At the moment when Mary Stewart laid her hand on the 
somewhat elaborate latch of the door to the closet, the Italian 
Queen, having convinced herself already of the importance of 
the Prince de Condé’s schemes, had just pressed the spring 
hidden by the skirting, one of the panels had fallen open, and 
Catherine had turned to the table to take up the papers and 
hide them, to turn her attention to the safeguard of the de- 
voted messenger who had brought them to her. When she 
heard the door open, she at once guessed that no one but 
Queen Mary would venture to come in unannounced. 

“You are lost,’’ she said to Christophe, seeing that she 
could neither hide the papers nor close the panel promptly 
enough to preserve the secret of her hiding-place. 

Christophe’s only reply was a sublime look. 

‘*Poor fellow!’’ said Catherine, before turning to her 
daughter-in-law. ‘‘ Treason, madame!’’ she exclaimed. ‘I 
have them fast. Send for the cardinal and the Duke. And 
be sure,’’ she added, pointing to Christophe, ‘‘that this fellow 
does not escape !’”’ 

Thus, in an instant, this masterful woman saw that it would 
be necessary to give up the hapless young man ; she could not 
hide him, it was impossible to help him to escape; and, be- 
side, though a week ago he might have been saved, now the 
Guises had, since that morning, been aware of the conspiracy, 
and they, too, must have the lists which she held in her hand, 
and were drawing all the Reformers into a trap. And so, 


+ 


138 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


pleased at finding her adversaries in the mind she had hoped 
for, now that the plot had become known, policy required her 
to assume the merit of discovering it. 

These dreadful considerations flashed through her mind in 
the brief moment while the young Queen was opening the 
door. Mary Stewart stood silent for an instant. Her expres- 
sion lost its brightness and assumed that keenness which sus- 
picion always gives the eye,.and which in her was terrible by 
the sudden contrast. She looked from Christophe to the 
Queen-mother, and from the Queen-mother to Christophe, 
with a glance of malignant doubt. Then she snatched up a 
bell, which brought in one of Catherine’s maids of honor. 

‘Mademoiselle de Rouet, send in the captain of the 
Guard,’’ said Mary Stewart, in breach of every law of eti- 
quette, necessarily set aside in such circumstances. 

While the young Queen gave her order, Catherine stood 
looking at Christophe as much as to say, ‘‘ Courage!’’ The 
young Reformer understood, and replied by an expression 
which conveyed, ‘‘ Sacrifice me, as they have sacrificed me!”’ 

‘Put your trust in me,’’ Catherine answered by a gesture. 

Then when her daughter-in-law turned upon her, she was 
deeply engaged in examining the papers. 

‘*You are of the Reformed religion?’’ said Mary Stewart 
to Christophe. 

‘* Ves, madame.”’ 

‘*Then I was not mistaken,’’ she muttered to herself, as 
she read in the young man’s eyes the same expression in which 
coldness and aversion lurked behind a look of humility. 

Pardaillan appeared at once, sent down by the two Princes 
of Lorraine and the King. The captain sent for by Mary 
Stewart followed this young man—a most devoted adherent 
of the Guises. 

‘Go from me to the King, beg him, with the cardinal and 
the Grand Master, to come here at once, and tell them I 
would not take such a liberty but that something of serious 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 139 


importance has occurred. Go, Pardaillan. And you, Lewis- 
ton, keep guard over this Reformed traitor,’’ she added to the 
Scotchman in their native tongue, pointing to the wretched 
Christophe. 

The two Queens did not speak till the King came. It was 
a terrible pause. Mary Stewart had shown her mother-in-law 
the whole extent of the part her uncles made her play ; her 
unsleeping and habitual distrust stood revealed; and her 
youthful conscience felt how disgraceful such a part must be to 
a great Queen. Catherine, on her side, had betrayed herself 
in her alarm, and feared that she had been understood ; she 
was trembling for the future. The two women, one ashamed 
and furious, the other vicious but calm, withdrew into the 
window-bay, one leaning on the right side, the other on the 
left; but their looks were so expressive that each turned 
away, and with a common instinct looked out of the window 
at the sky. These two women, clever as they were, at that 
moment had no more wit than the commonest. Perhaps it is 
always so when circumstances overpower men. There is 
always a moment when even genius is conscious of its small- 
ness in the presence of a great catastrophe. 

As for Christophe, he felt like a man falling into an abyss. 
Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened in the silence, looking 
at the furrier’s son and the two Queens with a soldier’s curi- 
osity. The King’s entrance put an end to this painful situ- 
ation. 

The cardinal went straight up to Queen Catherine. 

‘*T have in my hand all the threads of the plot hatched by 
the heretics ; they sent this boy to me carrying this treaty and 
these documents,’’ said Catherine in an undertone. 

While Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal, 
Queen Mary was speaking a few words in the Grand Master’s 
ear. 

‘¢What is this all about ?’’ asked the young King, standing 
alone amid this conflict of violent interests. 


140 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘«‘ The proofs of what I was telling your majesty are already 
to hand,”’ said the cardinal, seizing the papers. 

The Duc de Guise, unmindful of the fact that he was inter- 
rupting him, drew his brother aside and said in a whisper— 

‘¢This then makes me lieutenant-general without any op- 
position.”’ 

A keen glance was the cardinal’s only reply, by which he 
conveyed to his brother that he had already appreciated the 
advantages to be derived from Catherine’s false position. 

‘‘Who sent you?’’ asked the Duke of Christophe. 

‘¢ Chaudieu the preacher,’’ he replied. 

‘‘Young man, you lie,’’ said the Duke roughly. ‘‘ It was — 
the Prince de Condé.”’ 

‘« The Prince de Condé, monseigneur,’’ replied Christophe, 
with a look of surprise. ‘‘I never saw him. I belong to the 
Palais. I am working under Monsieur de Thou. I am his 
clerk, and he does not know that I have joined the religion. 
I only submitted to the preacher’s entreaties.”’ 

‘¢That will do,’? said the cardinal. ‘‘Call Monsieur de 
Robertet,’’ he added to Lewiston, ‘for this young villain is 
craftier than old politicians. He has taken us in, my brother 
and me, when we should have given him the host without 
confession.”’ 

‘You are no child, by heaven!” cried the Duke, ‘‘ and 
you shall be treated as a man.’’ 

‘‘They hoped to win over your august mother,’’ said the 
cardinal, turning to the King, and trying to lead him aside to 
bring him to his way of thinking. 

‘‘ Alas!’’ replied Catherine, speaking to her son with a 
‘Teproachful air, and stopping him just as the cardinal was 
taking him into the oratory to subjugate him with dangerous 
sloquence, ‘you here see the effect of the position I am 
placed in. I am supposed to rebel against my lack of influ- 
ence in public affairs—I, the mother of four princes of the 
House of Valois.’’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 141 


The young King prepared to listen. Mary Stewart, seeing 
his brow knit, led him off into the window recess, where she 
cajoled him with gentle speeches in a low voice; much the 
same, no doubt, as those she had lavished on him when he 
arose. 

The two brothers meanwhile read the papers handed over 
to them by the Queen-mother. Finding in them much in- 
formation of which their spies and Monsieur de Braguelonne, 
the governor of the chatelet, knew nothing, they were in- 
clined to believe in Catherine’s good faith. Robertet came 
in and had private instructions with regard to Christophe. 
The hapless tool of the leaders of the Reformation was led 
away by four men of the Scotch Guard, who took him down- 
stairs and handed him over to Monsieur de Montrésor, the 
provost of the castle. This terrible personage himself escorted 
Christophe with five or six sergeants to the prison situated in 
the vaulted cellars of the now ruined tower, which the verger 
of the Castle of Blois shows the visitor, and says that these 
were the oudliettes (dungeons). 

After such an event the Council could only be an empty 
form: the King, the young Queen, the Grand Master, and 
the Cardinal de Lorraine went back to the council-room, 
taking with them Catherine, quite conquered, who only spoke 
to approve of the measures demanded by the Guises. In 
spite of some slight opposition on the part of the Chancellor 
Olivier, the only person to utter a word suggesting the inde- 
pendence needful to the exercise of his functions, the Duc 
de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. 
Robertet carried the motions with a promptitude arguing such 
devotion as might be well called complicity. 

The King, with his mother on his arm, once more crossed 
the guardroom, and announced to the Court that he proposed 
to move to Amboise on the following day. This royal resi- 
dence had been unused since Charles VIII. had very involun- 
tarily killed himself there by striking his head against the 


142 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


pediment of a door that was being carved for him, believing 
that he could pass under the scaffolding without bending his 
head. Catherine, to mask the schemes of the Guises, had 
announced her intention of finishing the Castle of Amboise 
on behalf of the Crown at the same time as her own Castle 
of Chenonceaux. But no one was deceived by this pretense, 
and the Court anticipated strange events. 


After spending about two hours in accustoming himself to 
the darkness of his dungeon, Christophe found that it was 
lined with boards, clumsy indeed, but thick enough to make 
the square box healthy and habitable. The door, like that 
into a pig-sty, had compelled him to bend double to get into 
it. On one side of this trap a strong iron grating admitted 
a little air and light from the passage. This arrangement, 
exactly like that of the crypts at Venice, showed very plainly 
that the architect of the Castle of Blois belonged to the Vene- 
tian school, which gave so many builders to Europe in the 
Middle Ages. By sounding the wall above the woodwork, 
Christophe discovered that the two walls which divided this 
cell from two others, to the right and left, were built of brick; 
and as he knocked, to estimate the thickness of the wall, he 
was not a little surprised to hear some one knocking on the 
other side. 

‘Who are you?”’ asked his neighbor, speaking into the 
corridor. : 

‘‘T am Christophe Lecamus.’’ 

‘‘And I,”’ said the other voice, ‘‘am Captain Chaudieu. 
I was caught this evening at Beaugency; but, happily, there 
is nothing against me.”’ 

‘Everything is discovered,’’ said Christophe; ‘‘so you 
are saved from the worst of it.’’ 

‘¢We have three thousand men at this present time in the 
forests of Vendémois, all men determined enough to seize the 
Queen-mother and the King on their journey. Happily, la 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 143 


Renaudie was cleverer than I; he escaped. You had just set 
out when the Guisards caught us.”’ 

‘¢ But I know nothing of la Renaudie.”’ 

‘*Pooh! my brother told me everything,’’ replied the 
captain. 

On hearing this, Christophe went back to his bench and 
made no further reply to anything the so-called captain could 
say to him, for he had had enough experience of the law to 
know how necessary it was to be cautious in prison. 

In the middle of the night he saw the pale gleam of a 
lantern in the passage, after hearing the unlocking of the pon- 
derous bolts that closed the iron door of the cellar. The 
provost himself had come to fetch Christophe. This atten- 
tion to a man who had been left in the dungeon without food 
struck Christophe as strange ; but the upset at Court had, no 
doubt, led to his being forgotten. One of the provost’s ser- 
geants bound his hands with a cord, which he held till they 
had reached one of the low rooms in Louis XII.’s part of the 
castle, which evidently was the anteroom to the apartments of 
some person of importance. The sergeant and the provost 
bid him be seated on a bench, where the sergeant tied his 
feet as he had already tied his hands. Ata sign from Mon- 
sieur de Montrésor, the sergeant then left them. 

‘* Now listen to me, my young friend,’’ said the provost to 
Christophe, and the lad observed that he was in full dress at 
that hour of the night, for his fingers fidgeted with the collar 
of his Order. This circumstance made the furrier’s son 
thoughtful; he saw that there was more to come. At this 
moment, certainly, they could not be going either to try him 
or to hang him. 

“‘My young friend, you may spare yourself much suffering 
by telling me here and now all you know of the communica- 
tions between Queen Catherine and Monsieur de Condé. 
Not only will,you not be hurt, but you will be taken into the 
service of monseigneur, the lieutenant-general of the king- 


144 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


dom, who likes intelligent people, and who was favorably im- 
pressed by your looks. The Queen-mother is to be packed 
off to Florence, and Monsieur de Condé will no doubt stand 
his trial. So, take my word for it, small men will do well to 
attach themselves to the great men in power. ‘Tell me every- 
thing, and it will be to your advantage.”’ 

‘«¢ Alas, monsieur,’’ replied Christophe, ‘‘I have nothing to 
say. I have confessed all I know to Messieurs de Guise in the 
Queen’s room. Chaudieu persuaded me to place those papers 
in the hands of the Queen-mother, by making me believe that 
the peace of the country was involved.’’ 

‘¢ You never saw the Prince de Condé ?”’ 

‘¢ Never,’’ said Christophe. 

Thereupon Monsieur de Montrésor left Christophe and went 
into an adjoining room. 

Christophe was not long left to himself. The door by which 
he had entered soon opened for several men to pass in, who 
did not shut it, letting various far from pleasant sounds come 
in from the courtyard. Blocks of wood and instruments were 
brought in, evidently intended to torture the Reformers’ mes- 
senger. Christophe’s curiosity soon found matter for reflection 
in the preparations the new-comers were making under his very 
eyes. Two coarse and poorly-clad varlets obeyed the orders 
of a powerful and thick-set man, who, on coming in, had a 
look at Christophe like that of a cannibal at his victim; he 
had scrutinized him from head to foot, taking stock of his 
sinews, of their strength and power of resistance, with the 
calculating eye of a connoisseur. This man was the Blois 
executioner. Backward and forward several times, his men 
brought in a mattress, wooden wedges, planks, and other ob- 
jects, of which the use seemed neither obvious nor hopeful to 
the unhappy boy for whom the preparations were being made, 
and whose blood ran cold in his veins with apprehension, 
which though vague was appalling. Two other men came in 
when Monsieur de Montrésor reappeared. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 145 


‘* What, is nothing ready yet?’’ said the chief provost, to 
whom the two new-comers bowed respectfully. ‘‘Do you 
know,’’ he went on to the big man and his two satellites, 
‘¢that Monsieur le Cardinal supposes you to be getting on with 
your work? Doctor,’’ he added, turning to one of the new- 
comers, ‘‘there is your man,”’ and he pointed to Christophe. 

The doctor went up to the prisoner, untied his hands, and 
sounded his back and chest. Science quite seriously repeated 
the torturer’s investigation. Meanwhile, a servant in the 
livery of the House of Guise brought in several chairs, a table, 
and all the materials for writing. 

‘Begin your report,’’ said Monsieur de Montrésor to the 
second person who had come in, dressed in black, who was a 
clerk. 

Then he came back to stand by Christophe, to whom he 
said very mildly— 

‘My boy, the chancellor, having learnt that you refuse to 
give satisfactory replies to my questions, has decided that you 
must be put to the torture—ordinary and extraordinary.”’ 

‘*Is he in good health, and can he bear it?’’ the clerk 
asked of the doctor. 

‘* Yes,’’ said the man of medicine, a physician attached to 
the House of Lorraine. 

‘Well, then, retire to the adjoining room; we will send 
for you if it is necessary to consult you.”’ 

The physician left the room. 

His first panic past, Christophe collected all his courage. 
The hour of his martyrdom was come. He now looked on 
with cold curiosity at the arrangements made by the execu- 
tioner and his varlets. After hastily making up a bed, they 
proceeded to prepare a machine called the boot, consisting of 
boards, between which each leg of the victim was placed, sur- 
rounded with pads. The machinery used by bookbinders to 
press the volumes between two boards, which they tighten with 
cords, will give a very exact idea of the way in which each 

10 


146 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


leg was encased. It is easy, then, to imagine the effect of a 
wedge driven home by a mallet between the two cases in 
which the legs were confined, and which, being tightly bound 
with rope, could not yield. The wedges were driven in at 
the knees and ankles, as if to split a log of wood. The choice 
of these two spots where there is least flesh, and where, in con- 
sequence, the wedge found room at the expense of the bones, 
made this form of torture horribly painful. In ordinary tor- 
ture four wedges were driven in—two at the knees and two 
at the ankles; in extraordinary torture as many as eight were 
employed, if the physician pronounced that the victim’s powers 
of endurance were not exhausted. 

At this period the boots were also applied to the hands ; 
but as time pressed, the cardinal, the lieutenant-general of 
the kingdom, and the chancellor spared Christophe this. 

The preamble to the examination was written ; the provost 
himself had dictated a few sentences, walking about the room 
with a meditative air, and requiring Christophe to tell him 
his name—Christian name—age, and profession; then he 
asked him from whom he had received the papers he had de- 
livered to the Queen. 

‘¢ From Chaud!2u the minister,’’ said he. 

‘‘ Where did he give them to you?’”’ 

“‘At my own home in Paris.”’ 

‘‘When he handed them to you, he must have told you 
whether the Queen-mother would receive you well.”’ 

‘‘He told me nothing of the kind,’’ replied Christophe. 
‘* He only desired me to give them secretly to Queen Cath- 
erme.- . 

‘‘Then have you often seen Chaudieu, that he knew that 
you were coming here?”’ 

‘It was not from me that he heard that I was to carry the 
furs to the two Queens, and at the same time to ask in my 
father’s behalf for the money owed him by the Queen-mother; 
nor had I time to ask him who had told him.”’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 147 


‘¢But those papers, given to you without any wrapper or 
seal, contain a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine. 
You must have known that they exposed you to the risk of 
suffering the punishment dealt out to those who are implicated 
in a rebellion.”’ 

“Yes,’” 

‘¢The persons who induced you to commit an act of high 
treason must have promised you some reward and the Queen- 
mother’s patronage.”’ 

**T did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person 
whom I saw.”’ 

‘Then you persist in declaring that you did not see the 

Prince de Condé ?’’ 

$s.Ves."” 

‘* Did not the Prince de Condé tell you that the Queen- 
mother was inclined to enter into his views in antagonism to 
the Guises ?”’ 

-T did not see him.’’ 

‘‘'Take care. One of your accomplices, la Renaudie, is 
arrested. Strong as he is, he could not resist the torture that 
awaits you, and at last confessed that he, as well as the Prince, 
had had speech with you. If you wish to escape the anguish 
of torture, I beg you to tell the simple truth. Then, perhaps, 
you may win your pardon.”’ 

Christophe replied that he could not tell anything of which 
he had no knowledge, nor betray accomplices when he had 
none. On hearing this, the provost nodded to the executioner, 
and went back into the adjoining room. 

On seeing this, Christophe knit his brows, wrinkling his 
forehead with a nervous spasm, and preparing to endure. 
He clenched his fists with such a rigid clutch that the nails 
ran into the flesh without his feeling it. The three men took 
him up, carried him to the camp bed, and laid him there, his 
legs hanging down. While the executioner tied him fast with 
stout ropes, his two men each fitted a leg into a boot; the 


148 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


cords were tightened by means of a wrench without giving 
the victim any great pain. When each leg was thus held in a 
vise, the executioner took up his mallet and his wedges, and 
looked alternately at the sufferer and the clerk. 

‘Do you persist in your denial ?’’ said the clerk. 

‘¢T have told the truth,’’ replied Christophe. 

‘¢ Then go on,”’ said the clerk, shutting his eyes. 

The cords were tightened to the utmost, and this moment, 
perhaps, was the most agonizing of all the torture ; the flesh 
was so suddenly compressed that the blood was violently 
thrown back into the trunk. The poor boy could not help 
screaming terribly; he seemed about to faint. The doctor 
was called back. He felt Christophe’s pulse, and desired the 
executioner to wait for a quarter of an hour before driving in 
the wedges, to give time for the blood to recover its circula- 
tion and sensation to return. 

The clerk charitably told Christophe that if he could not 
better endure even the beginnings of the suffering he could 
not escape, he would do better to reveal all he knew; but 
Christophe’s only reply was— 

‘* The King’s tailor! the King’s tailor !”’ 

‘* What do you mean by saying that ?’’ asked the clerk. 

“¢ Foreseeing the torments I shall go through,’’ said Chris- 
tophe, slowly, to gain time and to rest, ‘¢ I am summoning all 
my strength, and trying to reinforce it by remembering the 
martyrdom endured for the sacred cause of the Reformation 
by the late King’s tailor, who was tortured in -the presence 
of the King and of Madame de Valentinois ; I will try to be 
worthy of him! ”? 

While the physician was advising the hapless man not to 
drive his torturers to extremities, the cardinal and the Duke, 
impatient to know the results of this examination, came in and 
desired Christophe to reveal the truth at once. The furrier’s 
son repeated the only confession he would allow himself to 
make, implicating nobody but Chaudieu. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 149 


The Princes nodded. On this, the executioner and his 
foreman seized their mallets, each took a wedge and drove it 
home between the boots, one standing on the right, and the 
other on the left. The executioner stood at the knees, the 
assistant at the ankles, opposite. The eyes of the witnesses 
of this hideous act were fixed on Christophe’s, who, excited 
no doubt by the presence of these grand personages, flashed 
such a look at them that his eyes sparkled like flame. 

At the two next wedges a horrible groan escaped him. 
Then when he saw the men take up the wedges for the severer 
torture, he remained silent ; but his gaze assumed such dread- 
ful fixity, and flashed at the two Princes such a piercing mag- 
netic fluid, that the Duke and the cardinal were both obliged 
to look down. Philippe le Bel had experienced the same 
defeat when he presided at the torture by hammer, inflicted 
in his presence on the Templars. ‘This consisted in hitting 
the victim on the chest with one’arm of the balanced hammer 
used to coin money, which was covered with a leather pad. 
There was one knight whose eyes were so fixed on the King 
that he was fascinated, and could not take his gaze off the 
sufferer. At the third blow the King rose and went away, 
after hearing himself called upon to appear before the judg- 
ment of God within a year—as he did. 

At the fifth wedge, the first of the greater torture, Chris- 
tophe said to the cardinal— 

‘¢Cut my misery short, monseigneur ; it is useless.’’ 

The cardinal and the Duke withdrew, and Christophe could 
hear from the next room these words, spoken by Queen 
Catherine— 

‘¢Go on, go on; after all, he is only a heretic 

She thought it prudent to appear more severe to her accom- 
plice than his executioners were. 

The sixth and seventh wedge were driven in, and Chris- 
tophe complained no more, his face shone with a strange 
radiance, due, no doubt, to the immense strength he derived 


1?? 


150 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


from fanatical excitement. In what else but in feeling can 
we hope to find the fulcrum enabling a man to endure such 
anguish? At last, when the executioner was about to insert 
the eighth wedge, Christophe smiled. This dreadful torment 
had lasted one hour. 

The clerk went to fetch the leech, to know whether the 
eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the suf- 
ferer’s life. The Duke meanwhile came in again to see 
Christophe. 

‘*By our Lady! you are a fine fellow,’’ said he, leaning 
down to speak in his ear. ‘‘I like a brave man. Enter my 
service, you shall be happy and rich, my favors will heal your 
bruised limbs ; I will ask you to do nothing cowardly, like re- 
joining your own party to betray their plans; there are always 
plenty of traitors, and the proof is to be found in the prisons 
of Blois. Only tell me on what terms are the Queen-mother 
and the Prince de Condé.”’ 

‘I know nothing about it, monseigneur,’’ cried Lecamus. 

The doctor came in, examined the victim, and pronounced 
that he could bear the eighth wedge. 

‘‘ Drive it in,’’ said the cardinal. ‘‘ After all, as the Queen 
says, he is only a heretic,’’ he added, with a hideous smile at 
Christophe. 

Catherine herself slowly came in from the adjoining room, 
stood in front of Christophe, and gazed at him coldly. She 
was the object of attentive scrutiny to the two brothers, who 
looked alternately at the Queen-mother and her accomplice. 
The whole future life of this ambitious woman depended on 
this solemn scrutiny; she felt the greatest admiration for 
Christophe’s courage, and she looked at him sternly ; she 
hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them. 

‘“*Come,’’ said she, ‘‘ young man, confess that you saw the 
Prince de Condé ; you will be well rewarded.”’ 

‘*Oh, madame, what a part you are playing!’ cried Chris- 
tophe, in pity for her. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC1. 151 


The Queen started. 

‘He is insulting me! Is he not to be hanged ?”’ said she 
to the two brothers, who stood lost in thought. 

‘¢ What a woman!”’ cried the Grand Master, who was con- 

' sulting his brother in the window recess. 

‘*T will stay in France and be revenged,’’ thought the 
Queen. ‘‘ Proceed, he must confess or let him die!’’ she ex- 
claimed, addressing Monsieur de Montrésor. 

The provost turned away, the executioners were busy, 
Catherine had an opportunity of giving the martyr a look, 
which no one else saw, and which fell like dew on Christophe. 
The great Queen’s eyes seemed to glisten with moisture; they 
were, in fact, full of tears, two tears at once repressed and 
dry. The wedge was driven home, one of the boards between 
which it was inserted split. Christophe uttered a piercing 
cry; then his face became radiant; he thought he was dying. 

**Let him die,’’ said the cardinal, echoing Queen Cath- 

-erine’s words with a sort of irony. ‘‘No, no,” he added to 
the provost, ‘‘ do not let us lose this clue.’’ 

The Duke and the cardinal held a consultation in a low 
voice. 

‘* What is to be done with him ?’’ asked the executioner. 

‘Send him to prison at Orleans,’’ said the Duke. ‘‘ And, 
above all,’’ he said to Monsieur de Montrésor, ‘‘ do not hang 
him without orders from me.”’ 

The excessive sensitiveness of every internal organ, strung 
to the highest pitch by the endurance which worked upon 
every nerve in his frame, no less affected every sense in Chris- 
tophe. He alone heard these words spoken by the Duc de 
Guise in the cardinal’s ear— 

‘¢T have not given up all hope of hearing the truth from 
this little man.”’ 

As soon as the two Princes had left the room, the execu- 
tioners unpacked the victim’s legs, with no attempt at gentle 
handling. 


152 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


‘Did you ever see a criminal with such fortitude?”’ said 
the head man to his assistants. ‘‘ The rogue has lived through 
the infliction of the eighth wedge; he ought to have died. 
I am the loser of the price of his body.”’ 

‘‘Untie me without hurting me, my good friends,’’ said 
poor Christophe. ‘‘ Some day I will reward you.”’ 

‘¢ Come, show some humanity,’’ said the doctor. ‘‘ Mon- 
seigneur the Duke esteems the young man, and commended 
him to my care,’’ cried the leech. 

‘‘T am off to Amboise with my men,’’ said the executioner 
roughly. ‘‘Take care of him yourself. And here is the 
gaoler.”’ 

The executioner went off, leaving Christophe in the hands 
of the smooth-spoken doctor, who, with the help of Christo- 
phe’s warder, lifted him on to a bed, gave him some broth, 
which he made him swallow, sat down by his side, felt his 
pulse, and tried to comfort him. 

‘You are not dying,’’ he said, ‘‘and you must feel a com- 
fort to your mind when you reflect that you have done your 
duty. The Queen charged me to take good care of you,’’ he 
added, in a low voice. 

‘“The Queen is very good,’’ said Christophe, in whom 
acute anguish had developed wonderful lucidity of mind, and 
who, after enduring so much, was determined not to spoil the 
results of his devotion. ‘‘ But she might have saved me so 
much suffering by not delivering me to my tormentors, and by 
telling them herself the secrets, of which I most truly know 
nothing.’’ 

On hearing this reply, the doctor put on his cap and cloak 
and left Christophe to his fate, thinking it vain to hope to 
gain anything from a man of that temper. The gaoler had 
the poor boy carried on a litter by four men to the town 
prison, where Christophe fell asleep, in that deep slumber 
which, it is said, comes upon almost every mother after the 
dreadful pains of childbirth. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 153 


The two Princes of Lorraine, when they transferred the 
Court to Amboise, had no hope of finding there the leader of 
the Reformed party, the Prince de Condé, whom they had 
ordered to appear in the King’s name to take him in a snare. 
As a vassal of the Crown and as a Prince of the Blood, 
Condé was bound to obey the behest of the King. Not to 
come to Amboise would be a felony; but, by coming, he 
would place himself in the power of the Crown. Now, at 
this moment, the Crown, the Council, the Court, and every 
kind of power were in the hands of the Duc de Guise and the 
Cardinal de Lorraine. 

In this difficult dilemma, the Prince de Condé showed the 
spirit of decisiveness and astuteness, which made him a worthy 
representative of Jeanne d’Albret and_the brave general of the 
Reformers’ forces. He traveled at the heels of the last con- 
spirators to Vendéme to support them in case of success. 
But when this first rush to arms ended in the brief skirmish 
in which the flower of the nobility whom Calvin had misled 
all perished, the Prince, and a following of fifty gentlemen, 
arrived at the chateau d’Amboise the very day after this affair, 
which the Guises, with crafty policy, spoke of as the riots at 
Amboise. On hearing of the Prince’s advance, the Duke 
sent out the Maréchal de Saint-André to receive him with an 
escort of a hundred men-at-arms. When the Béarnais came 
to the gate of the castle, the marshal in command refused to 
admit the Prince’s suite. 

‘¢ You must come in alone, sir,’’ said the Chancellor Olivier, 
Cardinal de Tournon, and Birague, who awaited him outside 
the portcullis. 

“© And why?” 

‘¢ You are suspected of felony,’’ replied the chancellor. 

The Prince, who saw that his party was being cut off by the 
Duc de Nemours, quietly replied— 

‘*Tf that is the — I will go into my cousin alone and 
prove my innocence.’ 


154 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


He dismounted and conversed with perfect freedom with 
Birague, Tournon, the Chancellor Olivier, and the Duc de 
Nemours, from whom he asked details of the riot. 

‘¢ Monseigneur,’’ said the Duc de Nemours, ‘‘ the rebels 
had sympathizers inside Amboise. Captain Lanoue had 
gotten in some men-at-arms, who opened the gate to them 
through which they got into the town, and of which they had 
the command 

‘‘That is to say, you got them into a sack,’’ replied the 
Prince, looking at Birague. 

‘¢If they had been supported by the attack that was to 
have been made on the Gate of Bons-Hommes by Captain 
Chaudieu, the preacher’s brother, they would have succeeded,”’ 
said the Duc de Nemours, ‘‘ but, from the position I had 
taken up, in obedience to the Duc de Guise, Captain Chau- 
dieu was obliged to make a detour to avoid fighting me. In- 
stead of arriving at night like the rest, that rebel did not 
come up till daybreak, just as the King’s troops had crushed 
those who had got into the town.”’ 

“¢ And you had a reserve to recapture the gate that had been 
given up to them?”’ 

‘*Monsieur le Maréchal de Saint-André was on the spot 
with five hundred men.”’ 

The Prince warmly praised these military manceuvres. 

‘*To have acted thus,’’ said he in conclusion, ‘the lieu- 
tenant-general must certainly have known the Reformers’ se- 
crets. They have evidently been betrayed.’’ 

The Prince was treated with greater strictness at each step. 
After being parted from his followers on entering the castle, 
the cardinal and the chancellor stood in his way when he 
turned to the stairs leading to the King’s apartments. 

‘*We are instructed by the King, sir, to conduct you to 
your own rooms.”’ 

*¢ Am I then a prisoner ?’”’ 

‘*If that were the King’s purpose, you would not be at- 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 155 


tended by a prince of the church and by me,”’’ replied the 
chancellor. 

The two functionaries led the Prince to an apartment where 
a guard—of honor so called—was allotted to him, and where 
he remained for several hours without seeing any one. From 
his window he looked out on the Loire, the rich country 
which makes such a beautiful valley between Amboise and 
Tours, and he was meditating on his situation, wonderiug 
what the Guises might dare to do to his person, when he 
heard the door of his room open, and saw the King’s fool 
come in, Chicot, who had once been in his service. 

‘¢T heard you were in disgrace,’’ said the Prince. 

‘* You cannot think how sober the Court has become since 
the death of Henri II.”’ 

‘«¢ And yet the King loves to laugh, surely.”’ 

‘Which King? Francis II. or Francis of Lorraine?’’ 

‘¢ Are you so fearless of the Duke that you speak so?”’ 

‘‘He will not punish me for that, sir,’’ replied Chicot, 
smiling. 

‘¢ And to what do I owe the honor of this visit ?’”’ 

‘¢ Was it not due to you after your coming here? I have 
brought you my cap and bauble.”’ 

‘I cannot get out then ?”’ 

otry 

~“ And if I do get out?”’ 

‘¢T will confess that you have won the game by playing 
against the rules.’’ 

‘¢Chicot, you frighten me. Have you been sent by some 
one who is interested in my fate?’’ 

Chicot nodded ‘‘ Yes.’’ He went nearer to the Prince, 
and conveyed to him that they were watched and overheard. 

‘¢ What have you tosay to me?”’ asked Monsieur de Condé. 

‘¢ That nothing but daring can get you out of the scrape,’’ 
said the fool, whispering the words into his ear. ‘And this 
is from the Queen-mother.”’ 


156 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


‘¢ Tell those who have sent you,’’ replied the Prince, ‘‘ that 
I should never have come to this castle if I had anything to 
blame myself for or to fear.’’ 

“‘T fly to carry your bold reply,’’ said the fool. 

Two hours later, at one in the afternoon, before the King’s 
dinner, the chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to 
fetch the Prince to conduct him to Francis II. in the great 
hall where the Council had sat. There, before all the Court, 
the Prince de Condé affected surprise at the cool reception 
the King had given him, and he asked the reason. 

‘You are accused, cousin,’’ said the Queen-mother sternly, 
‘of having meddled with the plots of the Reformers, and you 
must prove yourself a faithful subject and a good Catholic if 
you wish to avert the King’s anger from your House.”’ 

On hearing this speech, spoken by Catherine in the midst 
of hushed silence, as she stood with her hand in the King’s 
arm and with the Duc d’Orléans on her left hand, the Prince 
de Condé drew back three steps, and with an impulse of dig- 
nified pride laid his hand on his sword, looking at the persons 
present. 

‘‘ Those who say so, madame, lie in their throat!’’ he ex- 
claimed in angry tones, 

He flung his glove at the King’s feet, saying— 

‘* Let the man who will maintain this calumny stand forth !”’ 

A shiver ran through the whole Court when the Duc de 
Guise was seen to quit his place; but instead of picking up 
the glove as they expected, he went up to the intrepid 
hunchback. 

«If you need a second, Prince, I beg of you to accept my 
services,’’ said he. ‘‘I will answer for you, and will show 
the Reformers how greatly they deceive themselves if they 
hope to have you for their leader.”’ 

The Prince de Condé could not help offering his hand to 
the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Chicot picked up 
the glove and restored it to Monsieur de Condé. °*~ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 157 


«‘Cousin,’’ said the boy-King, ‘‘ you should never draw 


your sword but in defense of your country. Come to dinner.”’ 

The Cardinal de Lorraine, puzzled by his brother’s action, 
led him off to their rooms. The Prince de Condé having 
weathered the worst danger, gave his hand to Queen Mary 
Stewart to lead her to the dining-room; but, while making 
flattering speeches to the young Queen, he was trying to dis- 
cern what snare was at this moment being laid for him by the 
Balafré’s policy. In vain he racked his brain, he could not 
divine the Guises’ scheme ; but Queen Mary betrayed it. 

‘‘TIt would have been a pity,’’ said she, laughing, ‘‘ to see 
so clever a head fall; you must allow that my uncle is mag- 
nanimous.”’ 

‘© Yes, madame, for my head fits no shoulders but my own, 
although one is larger than the other. But is it magnanimity 
in your uncle? Has he not rather gained credit at a cheap 
rate? Do you think it such an easy matter to have the law 
of a Prince of the Blood?”’ - 

‘¢ We have not done yet,’’ replied she. ‘‘ We shall see how 
you behave at the execution of the gentlemen, your friends, 
over which the Council has determined to make the greatest 
display.”’ 

‘*T shall do as the King does,”’ said Condé. 

‘‘The King, the Queen-mother, and I shall all be present, 
with all the Court and the ambassadors se 

‘¢ Quite a high day ?”’ said the Prince ironically. 

‘¢ Better than that,’’ said the young Queen, ‘‘an aufo-da-fe,* 
a function of high political purport. The gentlemen of 
France must be subjugated by the Crown ; they must be cured 
of their taste for faction and manceuvring os 

‘¢ You will not cure them of their warlike temper by showing 
them their danger, madame, and at this game you risk the 
Crown itself,’’ replied the Prince. 

At the end of this dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen 

* Lit.: Act of Faith—the ceremony of burning heretics. 








158 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Mary was so unfortunately daring as to turn the conversation 
publicly on the trial which the nobles, taken under arms, 
were at that moment undergoing, and to speak of the neces- 
sity for giving the utmost solemnity to their execution. 

‘¢ But, madame,”’ said Francis II., ‘‘is it not enough for 
the King of France to know that the blood of so many brave 
gentlemen must be shed? Must it be a cause of triumph ?’’ 

«* No, sir, but an example,’’ replied Catherine. 

‘*VYour grandfather and your father were in the habit of 
seeing heretics burned,’’ said Mary Stewart. 

‘The kings who reigned before me went their way,’’ said 
Francis, ‘and I mean to go mine.”’ | 

‘¢ Philip II.,’’ Catherine went on, ‘‘ who is a great king, 
lately, when he was in the Netherlands, had an auto-da-fe 
postponed till he should have returned to Valladolid.’’ 

‘¢ What do you think about it, cousin ?’’ said the King to 
the Prince de Condé. 

‘¢Sire, you cannot avoid going ; the papal nuncio and the 
ambassadors must be present. For my part, I am delighted 
to go if the ladies are to be of the party.”’ 

The Prince, at a glance from Catherine de’ Medici, had 
boldly taken his line. 

While the Prince de Condé was being admitted to the 
Castle of Amboise, the furrier to the two Queens was also 
arriving from Paris, brought thither by the uneasiness pro- 
duced by the reports of the rebellion, not only in himself and 
his family, but also in the Lalliers. 

At the gate of the castle, when the old man craved admis- 
sion, the captain of the Guard, at the words ‘‘ Queen’s furrier,’’ 
answered at once— 

‘* My good man, if you want to be hanged, you have only 
to set foot in the courtyard.”’ 

On hearing this the unhappy father sat down on a rail a 
little way off, to wait till some attendant on either of the 
Queens, or some woman of the Court, should pass him, 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 159 


to ask for some news of his son; but he remained there the 
whole day without seeing anybody he knew, and was at last 
obliged to go down into the town, where he found a lodging, 
not without difficulty, in an inn on the square where the ex- 
ecutions were to take place. He was obliged to pay a livre a 
day (then a very large sum) to secure a room looking out on 
the square. 

On the following day he was brave enough to look on from 
his window at the rebels who had been condemned to the 
wheel, or to be hanged, as men of minor importance ; and the 
Syndic of the Furriers’ Guild was glad enough not to find his 
son among the sufferers. 

When it was all over, he went to place himself in the 
clerk’s way. Having mentioned his name and pressed a 
purse full of crown-pieces into the man’s hands, he begged him 
to see whether, in the three former days of execution, the 
name of Christophe Lecamus had occurred. The registrar, 
touched by the despairing old father’s manners and tone of 
voice, conducted him to his own house. After carefully com- 
paring notes, he could assure the old man that the said Chris- 
tophe was not among those who had hitherto been executed, 
nor was he named among those who were to die within the 
next few days. 

‘¢ My dear master,’’ said the clerk to the furrier, ‘‘ the Par- 
lement is now engaged in trying the lords and gentlemen 
concerned in the business, and the principal leaders. So, 
possibly, your son is imprisoned in the castle, and will be one 
in the magnificent execution for which my lords the Duc de 
Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are making great prepa- , 
rations. Twenty-seven barons are to be beheaded, with eleven 
counts and seven marquises, fifty gentlemen in all, and leaders 
of the Reformers. As the administration of justice in Tou- 
raine has no connection with that of the Paris Parlement, if you 
positively must have some news of your son, go to my lord 
the Chancellor Olivier, who, by the orders of the lieutenant- 


160 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


general of the kingdom, has the management of the pro- 
ceedings.”’ 

Three times did the poor old man go to the chancellor’s 
house and stand in a file of people in the courtyard in com- 
mon with an immense number of people who had come to 
pray for their relations’ lives ; but as titled folk were admitted 
before the middle-class, he was obliged to give up all hope of 
speaking with the chancellor, though he saw him several 
times coming out of his house to go either to the chateau or to 
the Commission appointed by the Parlement, along a way 
cleared for him by soldiers, between two hedges of petition- 
ers who were thrust aside. 

It was a dreadful scene of misery, for among this crowd 
were wives, daughters, and mothers, whole families in tears. 
Old Lecamus gave a great deal of gold to the servants at the 
castle, enjoining on them that they should deliver certain 
letters he wrote to la Dayelle, Queen Mary’s waiting-woman, 
or to the Queen-mother’s woman; but the lackeys took the 
goodman’s money, and then, by the cardinal’s orders, handed 
all letters to the provost of the Law Court. Asa consequence 
of their unprecedented cruelty, the Princes of Lorraine had 
cause to fear revenge: and they never took greater precau- 
tions than during the stay of the Court at Amboise, so that 
neither the most effectual bribery, that of gold, nor the most 
diligent inquiries brought the furrier any light as to his son’s 
fate. He wandered about the little town in a melancholy 
way, watching the tremendous preparations that the cardinal 
was making for the shocking spectacle at which the Prince de 
-Condé was to be present. 

Public curiosity was being stimulated, by every means in 
use at the time, from Paris to Nantes. The execution had 
been announced from the pulpit by every preacher, in a breath 
with the King’s victory over the heretics. 

Three elegant stands, the centre one apparently to be the 
finest of the three, were being erected against the curtain-wall 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 161 


of the castle, at the foot of which the execution was to take 
place. All around the open space raised wooden seats were 
being put up, after the fashion of an amphitheatre, to accom- 
modate the enormous crowd attracted by the notoriety of this 
auto-da-fe. About ten thousand persons were camping out in 
the fields on the day before this hideous spectacle. The roofs 
were crowded with spectators, and windows were let for as 
much as ten livres, an enormous sum at that time. 

The unhappy father had, as may be supposed, secured one 
of the best places for commanding a view of the square where 
so many men of family were to perish, on a huge scaffold 
erected in the middle, and covered with black cloth. On 
the morning of the fatal day, the headsman’s block, on which 
the victim laid his head, kneeling in front of it, was placed 
on the scaffold, and an armchair, hung with black, for the 
recorder of the Court, whose duty it was to call the con- 
demned by name and read their sentence. The inclosure was 
‘guarded from early morning by the Scotch soldiers and the 
men-at-arms of the King’s household, to keep the crowd out 
till the hour of the executions. 

After a solemn mass in the chapel of the castle and in every 
church in the town, the gentlemen were led forth, the last 
survivors of all the conspirators. These men, some of whom 
had been through the torture chamber, were collected round 
the foot of the scaffold, and exhorted by monks, who strove 
to persuade them to renounce the doctrines of Calvin. But 
not one would listen to these preachers, turned on to them by 
the Cardinal de Lorraine, among whom, no doubt, these 
gentiemen feared that there might be some spies on behalf of 
the Guises. 

To escape being persecuted with these exhortations, they 
began to sing a psalm turned into French verse by Clément 
Marot. Calvin, as is well known, had decreed that God 
should be worshiped in the mother-tongue of every country, 
from motives of commonsense as well as from antagonism to 

11 


162 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


the Roman Church. It was a pathetic moment for all those 
among the throng, who felt for these gentlemen, when they 
heard this verse sung at the moment when the Court appeared 
on the scene— 


“ Lord, help us in our need! 
Lord, bless us with Thy grace! 
And on the saints in sore distress 
Let shine Thy glorious face!” 


The eyes of the Reformers all centred on the Prin& de 
Condé, who was intentionally placed between Queen Mary 
and the Duc d’Orléans. Queen Catherine de’ Medici sat 
next her son, with the cardinal on her left. The papal nuncio 
stood behind the two Queens. The lieutenant-general of 
the kingdom was on horseback, below the royal stand, with 
two marshals of France and his captains. As soon as the 
Prince de Condé appeared, all the gentlemen sentenced to 
death, to whom he was known, bowed to him, and the brave 
hunchback returned the salutation. 

‘*Tt is hard,’’ said he to the Duc d’Orléans, ‘‘ not to be 
civil to men who are about to die.’’ 

The two other grand stands were filled by invited guests, 
by courtiers, and the attendants on their majesties ; in short, 
the rank and fashion of the castle from Blois, who thus rushed 
from festivities to executions, just as they afterward rushed 
from the pleasures of Court life to the perils of war, with a 
readiness which to foreigners will always be one of the main- 
springs of their policy in France. The poor Syndic of the 
Furriers’ Guild felt the keenest joy at failing to discern his 
son among the fifty or so gentlemen condemned to death. 

At a signal from the Duc de Guise, the clerk, from the top 
of the scaffold, called out at once, in a loud voice— 

‘¢ Jean-Louis-Albéric, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, 
of the crime of high treason, and of bearing arms against the 
King’s majesty.’’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 163 


A tall, handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm 
step, bowed to the people and to the Court, and said— 

«The indictment is false ; I bore arms to deliver the King 
from his enemies of Lorraine! ”’ 

He laid his head on the block, and it fell. 

The Reformers sang— 


“ Thou, Lord, hast proved our faith 
And searched our soul’s desire, 
And purified our froward hearts, 
As silver proved by fire.” 


‘¢ Robert-Jean-René Briquemaut, Comte de Villemongis, 
guilty of high treason and rebellion against the King,’’ cried 
the recorder. 

The Count dipped his hands in the Baron de Raunay’s 
blood, and said— 

‘*May this blood be on the heads of those who are truly 
guilty!”’ 

The Reformers sang on— 


«Thou, Lord, hast led our feet 
Where foes had laid their snare; 
To Thee, O Lord, the glory be, 
Though we should perish there.’ 


‘¢ Confess, my lord nuncio,’’ said the Prince de Condé, 
‘‘that if French gentlemen know how to plot, they also know 
how to die.”’ 

‘‘What hatred you are entailing on the heads of your 
children, brother,’’ said the Duchesse de Guise to the Cardi- 
nal de Lorraine. 

‘¢ The sight makes me feel sick,’’ said the young King, who 
had turned pale at the sight of all this bloodshed. 

‘*Pooh! Rebels!’’ said Catherine de’ Medici. 

Still the hymn went on, still the axe was plied. At last the 


164 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


sublime spectacle of men who could die singing, and, above 
all, the impression produced on the crowd by the gradual 
dwindling of the voices, became stronger than the terror 
inspired by the Guises. 

‘* Mercy !’’ cried the mob, when they heard at last only 
the feeble chant of a single victim, reserved till the last, as 
being the most important. 

He was standing alone at the foot of the ens leading up 
to the scaffold, and sang— 


‘‘ Lord, help us in our need! 
Lord, bless us with Thy grace! 
And on the saints in sore distress 
Let shine Thy glorious face!” 


‘““Come, Duc de Nemours,’’ said the Prince de Condé, 
who was tired of his position; ‘‘ you to whom the securing of 
the victory is due, and who helped to entrap all these people 
—do you not feel that you ought to ask the life of this one? 
It is Castelnau, who, as I was told, had your promise for 
courteous treatment when he surrendered re 

“¢ Did I wait to see him here before trying to save him?”’ 
said the Duc de Nemours, stung by this bitter reproof. 

‘The clerk spoke slowly, intentionally, no doubt— 

‘¢ Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused 
and convicted of the crime of high treason and of fighting 
against his majesty the King.’’ 

‘* No,” retorted Castelnau haughtily; ‘‘ it can be no crime to 
oppose the tyranny and intended usurpation of the Guises!’’ 

The headsman, who was tired, seeing some stir in the royal 
seats, rested on his axe. 

‘‘ Monsieur le Baron,’’ said he, ‘‘I should be glad not to 
hurt you. One minute may perhaps save you.”’ 

And all the people shouted again for mercy. 

“‘Come,’’ said the King, ‘‘a pardon for poor Castelnau, 
who saved the Duc d’Orléans.”’ 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 165 


The base cardinal intentionally misinterpreted the word 
‘¢Come.’’ He nodded to the executioner, and Castelnau’s 
head fell at the very moment when the King pronounced his 
pardon. 

‘¢ That one goes to your account, cardinal,’’ said Catherine. 

On the day after this horrible massacre, the Prince de 
Condé set out for Navarre. 

This affair made a great sensation throughout France and 
in every foreign Court. The torrents of noble blood then 
shed caused the Chancellor Olivier such deep grief that this 
admirable judge, seeing the end at which the Guises were 
aiming, felt that he was not strong enough to hold his own 
against them. Although they had made him what he was, 
he would not sacrifice his duty and the Monarchy to them ; 
he retired from public life, suggesting that 1’ H6pital should 
be his successor. Catherine, on hearing of Olivier’s choice, 
proposed Birague for the post of chancellor, and urged her 
"request with great pertinacity. The wily cardinal, who knew 
nothing of the note written to Catherine by 1’Hdépital, and 
who believed him still faithful to the House of Lorraine, 
upheld him as Birague’s rival, and the Queen-mother affected 
to be overridden. 

L’H6pital was no sooner appointed than he took steps to 
prevent the introduction into France of the holy office 
(Inquisition), which the Cardinal de Lorraine wished to estab- 
lish ; and he so effectually opposed the anti-Gallican meas- 
ures and policy of the Guises, and showed himself so sturdy a 
Frenchman, that within three months of his appointment he 
was exiled, to reduce his spirit, to his estate of le Vignay, 
near Etampes. 

Old Lecamus impatiently waited till the Court should leave 
Amboise, for he could find no opportunity of speaking to 
either Queen Mary or Queen Catherine; but he hoped to be 
able to place himself in their way at the time when the Court 
should be moving along the river-bank on the way back to 


166 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


Blois. The furrier dressed himself as a poor man, at the risk 
of being seized as a spy, and, favored by this disguise, he 
mingled with the beggars who stood by the wayside. 

After the departure of the Prince de Condé, the Duke and 
the cardinal thought that they had silenced the Reformed 
party, and they left the Queen-mother a little more liberty. 
Lecamus knew that Catherine, instead of traveling in a litter, 
liked to ride on horseback on a planchette, as it was called, a 
side-saddle with a foot-rest. This sort of stirrup was invented 
by or for Catherine, who, having hurt her leg, rested both feet 
on a velvet sling, sitting sideways, and supporting one knee in 
a hollow cut in the saddle. As the Queen had very fine legs, 
she was accused of having hit on this device for displaying 
them. 

Thus the old man was able to place himself in sight of the 
Queen-mother ; but when she saw him she affected anger. 

‘* Go away from hence, good man, and let no one see you 
speaking to me,’’ she said with some anxiety. ‘‘ Get yourself 
appointed delegate to the States-General from the corpora- 
tion of Paris Guilds, and be on my side in the Assembly 
at Orleans, you will then hear something definite about your 
son oe 

‘* Ts he alive ?’’ said the old man. 

‘¢ Alas!.”’ said the Queen, ‘‘ I hope it.”’ 

And Lecamus was obliged to return home with this sad 
reply and the secret as to the convocation of the States-Gen- 
eral, which the Queen had told him. 





Some days before this, the Cardinal de Lorraine had re- 
ceived information as to the guilt of the Court of Navarre. 
At Lyons, and at Mouvans in Dauphiné, the Reformers, com- 
manded by the most enterprising of the Bourbon princes, had 
tried to inflame the population. This daring attempt, after 
the dreadful executions at Amboise, astonished the Guises, 
who, to put an end to heresy, no doubt, by some means of 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 167 


which they kept the secret, proposed to assemble the States- 
General at Orleans. Catherine de’ Medici, who saw a sup- 
port for her own policy in the representation of the nation, 
consented with joy. The cardinal, who aimed at recapturing 
his prey and overthrowing the House of Bourbon, convoked 
the States solely to secure the presence of the Prince de Condé 
and of the King of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, father of 
Henri IV. He then meant to make use of Christophe to 
convict the Prince of high treason if he were able once more 
to get him into the King’s power. 

After spending two months in the prison of Blois, Chris- 
tophe one morning was carried out on a litter lying on a 
mattress, was embarked on a barge, and taken up the river to 
Orleans before a westerly breeze. He reached that town the 
same evening, and was taken to the famous tower of Saint- 
Aignan. Christophe, who knew not what to make of his 
transfer, had time enough for meditation on his behavior and 
-on*his future prospects. There he remained two months 
more, on his bed, unable to use his legs. His bones were 
crushed. When he begged to be allowed the help of a sur- 
geon, the gaoler told him that his orders with regard to his 
prisoner were so strict that he dared not allow any one else 
even to bring him his food. This severity, of which the effect 
was absolutely solitary confinement, surprised Christophe. 
His idea was that he must either be hanged or released ; he 
knew nothing whatever of the events happening at Am- 
boise. 

In spite of the secret warnings to remain at home sent to 
them by Catherine de’ Medici, the two chiefs of the House of 
Bourbon determined to appear at the meeting of the States- 
General, since autograph letters from the King were reassur- 
ing; and when the Court was settling at Orleans, Groslot, the 
Chancellor of Navarre, announced their advent, to the surprise 
of all. 

Francis II. took up his quarters in the house of the Chan- 


168 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


cellor of Navarre, who was also the Bailli or Recorder of 
Orleans. This man Groslot, whose double appointment is 
one of the odd features of a time when Reformers were in 
possession of abbeys—Groslot, the Jacques Coeur of Orleans, 
one of the richest citizens of his day, did not leave his name 
to his house. It came to be known as the Baz/iage, having 
been purchased, no doubt, from his heirs, by the Crown, or 
by the provincial authorities, to be the seat of that tribunal. 
This elegant structure, built by the citizens of the sixteenth 
century, adds a detail to the history of a time when the King, 
the nobility, and the middle-class vied with each other in 
wealth, elegance, and splendor; especially in their dwellings 
—as may be seen at Varangeville, Ango’s magnificent manor- 
house, and the Hétel d’Hercules, as it is called, in Paris, 
which still exists, but in a condition that is the despair of 
archeologists and of lovers of medizeval art. 

Those who have been to Orleans can hardly have failed to 
observe the Town Hall in the Place de l’Estape. This town- 
hall is the Old Bailli’s Court, the Hétel Groslot, the most 
illustrious and most neglected house in Orleans. 

The remains of this building plainly show to the archzolo- 
gist’s eye how magnificent it must once have been, at a time 
when citizens built their houses more of wood than of stone, 
and the upper ranks alone had the right to build manor-houses, 
a word of special meaning. Since it served as the King’s 
residence at a time when the Court made so much display of 
pomp and luxury, the Hétel Groslot must then have been the 
largest and finest house in Orleans. 

It was on the Place de l’Estape that the Guises and the 
King held a review of the municipal guard, to which Monsieur 
de Cypierre was nominated captain during the King’s visit. 
At that time, the cathedral of Sainte-Croix—afterward finished 
by Henry IV., who desired to set the seal to his conversion— 
was being built, and the surrounding ground, strewn with 
blocks of stone and encumbered with piles of timber, was held 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 169 


by the Guises, who lodged in the bishop’s palace, now de- 
stroyed. 

The town was in military occupation, and the measures 
adopted by the Guises plainly showed how little liberty they 
intended to give to the States-General, while the delegates 
flocked into the town and raised the rents of the most wretched 
lodgings. The Court, the municipal militia, the nobles, and 
the citizens all alike expected some Coup 2’ Etat; and their 
expectations were fulfilled when the Princes of the Blood 
arrived. 

A’ soon as the two Princes entered the King’s room, the 
Court saw with dismay how insolent was the behavior of the 
Cardinal de Lorraine, who, to assert his audacious pretensions, 
kept his head covered, while the King of Navarre before him 
was beheaded. Catherine de’ Medici stood with downcast 
eyes, not to betray her indignation. A solemn explanation 
then took place between the young King and the two heads of 
the younger branch. It was brief, for at the first words spoken 
by the Prince de Condé, Francis II. closed the discussion by 
saying— 

<¢ My lords and cousins, I fancied the incident of Amboise 
was at an end; it is not so, and we shall see cause to regret 
our indulgence! ”’ 

‘«It is not the King who speaks thus,’’ said the Prince de 
Condé, ‘‘ but Messieurs de Guise.’’ 

‘‘Good-day, monsieur,”’ said the little King, crimson with 
rage. 

As he went through the great hall, the Prince was stopped 
by the two captains of the Guards. When the officer of the 
French Guard stepped forward, the Prince took a letter out of 
the breast of his doublet and said, in the presence of all the 
Court— ; 

«Can you read me this, Monsieur de Maillé-Brézé?”’ 

‘‘ With pleasure,’’ said the French captain to the Prince de 
Condé. 


170 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


<¢ ¢ Cousin. come in all security ; I give you my royal word 
that you may. If you need a safe-conduct, these presents will 


serve you.’ ”’ 


‘And signed ?’?’ said the bold and mischievous hunch- 
back. 

«¢ Signed ‘ Francois,’ ’’ said Maille. 

‘Nay, nay,’’ replied the Prince, ‘it is signed ‘ Your good 
cousin and friend, Francois!’ Gentlemen,’’ he went on, 
turning to the Scotch Guard, ‘‘I will follow you to the prison 
whither you are to escort me by the King’s orders. There is 
enough noble spirit, no doubt, in this room to fully under- 
stand that.” 

The utter silence that reigned in the room might have en- 
lightened the Guises, but silence is the last thing that princes 
listen to. 

‘* Monseigneur,’’ said the Cardinal de Tournon, who was 
following the Prince, ‘‘since the day at Amboise you have 
taken steps in opposition to royal authority at Lyons and 
at Mouvans in Dauphiné—things of which the King knew 
nothing when he addressed you in those terms.”’ 

«Rascals! ’’ cried the Prince, laughing. 

“‘ You made a public declaration against the mass and in 
favor of heresy-———’’ 

‘‘We are masters in Navarre,’’ said the Prince. 

‘In Béarn, you mean! But you owe homage to the 
Crown,”’ replied the Président de Thou. 

‘‘Ah, you are here, president ! ’’ exclaimed the Prince ironi- 
cally. ‘‘And is all the Parlement with you?” 

With these words, the Prince flashed a look of contempt at 
the cardinal and left the room; he understood that his head 
was in peril. 

On the following day, when Messieurs de Thou, de Viole, 
d’Espesse, Bourdin, the public prosecutor, and du Tillet, the 
chief clerk, came into the prison, he kept them standing, and 





7 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 171 


expressed his regrets at seeing them engaged on a business 
which did not concern them; then he said to the clerk— 

“oWerite.” 

And he dictated as follows: 

‘*T, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, peer of the realm, 
Marquis de Conti, Comte de Soissons, Prince of the Blood of 
France, formally refuse to recognize any Commission appointed 
to try me, inasmuch as that by virtue of my rank and the 
privileges attaching to every member of the royal family, I 
can only be attainted, heard, and judged by a Parlement of 
all the peers in their places, the Chambers in full assembly, and 
the King seated on the bed of justice. You ought to know 
this better than any one, gentlemen, and this is all you will 
get of me. For the rest, I trust in God and my Right.”’ 

The magistrates proceeded nevertheless, in spite of the de- 
termined silence of the Prince. 

The King of Navarre was at liberty, but closely watched ; 
his prison was a wider one than the Prince’s, and that was the 
whole difference between his position and his brother’s ; for 
the heads of the King and the Prince were to be felled at the 
same time. 

So Christophe was so closely confined by order of the 
cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom only to 
afford proof to the judges of the Prince’s guilt. The letters 
found on the person of La Sagne, the Prince’s secretary, in- 
telligible to a statesman, were not clear enough for the judges. 
The cardinal had thought of bringing the Prince accidentally 
face to face with Christophe, who had been placed, not with- 
out a purpose, in a lower room of the tower of Saint-Aignan, 
and the window looked out on the yard. Each time he was 
examined by the magistrates, Christophe intrenched himself 
in systematic denial, which naturally prolonged the affair till 
the meeting of the States-General. 

Lecamus, who had made a point of getting himself elected 
by the citizens of Paris as a deputy for the ‘‘ Third Estate,”’ 


172 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


came to Orleans a few days after the Prince’s arrest. This 
event, of which he had news at Etampes, increased his alarms, 
for he understood—he who alone in the world knew of his 
son’s interview with the Prince under the Pont au Change— 
that Christophe’s fate was bound up with that of the rashly 
daring head of the Reformation party. So he determined to 
study the mysterious interests which had become so entangled 
at Court since the States had met, so as to hit upon some plan 
for rescuing his son. It was vain to think of having recourse 
to Queen Catherine, who refused to receive the furrier. No 
one of the Court to whom he had access could give him any 
satisfactory information with regard to Christophe, and he 
had sunk to such depths of despair that he was about to ad- 
dress himself to the cardinal, when he heard that Monsieur de 
Thou had accepted the office of one of the judges of the Prince 
de Condé—a blot on the good fame of that great jurist. The 
Syndic went to call on his son’s patron, and learned that 
Christophe was alive but a prisoner. 

Tourillon, the glover, to whose house la Renaudie had sent 
Christophe, had offered a room to the Sieur Lecamus for the 
whole time during which the States-General should be sitting. 
He believed the furrier to be, like himself, secretly attached 
to the Reformed religion ; but he soon perceived that a father 
who fears for his son’s life thinks no more of shades of re- 
ligious dogma ; he throws himself soul and body on the mercy 
of God, never thinking of the badge he wears before men. 

The old man, repulsed at every attempt, wandered half- . 
witless about the streets. Against all his expectations, his 
gold was of no avail ; Monsieur de Thou had warned him that 
even if he should bribe some servant of the Guise household, 
he would only be so much out of pocket, for the Duke and 
the cardinal allowed nothing to be known concerning Chris- 
tophe. This judge, whose fair fame is somewhat tarnished by 
the part he played at this juncture, had tried to give the un- 
happy father some hope; but he himself trembled for his god- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 173 


son’s life, and his consolations only added to the furrier’s 
alarm. The old man was always prowling round the house ; 
in three months he grew quite thin. 

His only hope now lay in the warm friendship which had 
so long bound him to the Hippocrates of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. Ambroise Paré tried to say a word to Queen Mary as 
he came out of the King’s room; but the instant he men- 
tioned Christophe, the daughter of the Stewarts, annoyed by 
the prospect before her in the event of any ill befalling the 
King, whom she believed to have been poisoned by the Re- 
formers, as he had been taken suddenly ill, replied— 

‘*Tf my uncles would take my opinion, such a fanatic would 
have been hanged before now.”’ 

On the evening when this ominous reply had been repeated 
to Lecamus by his friend Paré, on the Place de 1’Estape, he 
went home half-dead, and retired to his room, refusing to eat 
any supper. 

Tourillon, very uneasy, went upstairs, and found the old 
man in tears; and as the poor furrier’s feeble eyes showed 
the reddened and wrinkled linings of the lids, the glover 
believed that they were tears of blood. 

‘¢ Be comforted, father,’’ said the Huguenot, ‘‘ the citizens 
of Orleans are enraged at seeing their town treated as if it 
had been taken by assault, and guarded by Monsieur de 
Cypierre’s soldiery. If the Prince de Condé’s life should be 
in danger, we should very soon demolish the tower of Saint- 
Aignan, for the whole town is on the Reformers’ side, and 
would rise in rebellion, you may be quite certain.”’ 

‘¢ But even if the Guises were seized, would their death 
give me back my son ?”’ said the unhappy father. 

At this instant there was a timid rap at the outer door ; 
Tourillon went down to open it. It was quite dark. In 
these troubled times the master of every household took elab- 
orate precautions. Tourillon looked out through the bars of 
a wicket in the door and saw a stranger, whose accent be- 


174 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


trayed him as an Italian. This man, dressed in black, asked 
to see Lecamus on matters of business, and Tourillon showed 
him in. At the sight of the stranger the old furrier quaked 
visibly, but the visitor had time to lay a finger on his lips. 
Lecamus, understanding the gesture, immediately said— 

‘* You have come to offer furs for sale, I suppose ?”’ 

“‘Yes,’’ replied the stranger in Italian, with an air of 
privity. 

This man was, in fact, the famous Ruggieri, the Queen- 
mother’s astrologer. ‘Tourillon went downstairs, perceiving 
that he was not wanted. 

‘¢Where can we talk without fear of being overheard ?”’ 
said the astute Florentine. 

‘‘Only in the open fields,’’ replied Lecamus. ‘‘ But we 
shall not be allowed out of the town ; you know how strictly 
the gates are guarded. No one can pass out without an order 
from Monsieur de Cypierre, not even a member of the Assem- 
bly like myself. Indeed, at to-morrow’s sitting we all intend 
to complain of this restriction on our liberty.’’ 

‘‘Work like a mole, never let your paws be seen in any 
kind of business,’’ replied the wily Florentine. ‘* To-morrow 
will no doubt be a decisive day. From my calculations, to- 
morrow, or soon after, you will, perhaps, see your son.” 

‘‘God grant it! Though you are said to deal only with 
the devil !”’ 

‘« Come and see me at home,’’ said the astrologer, smiling. 
‘‘T watch the stars from the tower belonging to the Sieur 
Touchet du Beauvais, the lieutenant of the bailiwick, whose 
daughter has found favor in the eyes of the little Duc d’Or- 
léans. I have cast the girl’s horoscope, and it does in fact 
portend that she will become a great lady and be loved by a 
king. The lieutenant is a clever fellow, he is interested in 
science, and the Queen found me lodgings with the good 
man, who is cunning enough to be a rabid Guisard till Charles 
IX. comes to the throne.”’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 175 


The furrier and the astrologer made their way to the Sieur 
de Beauvais’ house without being seen or interfered with ; 
and, in the event of Lecamus being discovered, Ruggieri meant 
to afford him a pretext in his desire to consult the astrologer 
as to his son’s fate. 

When they had climbed to the top of the turret where the 
astrologer had established himself, Lecamus said— 

‘¢Then my son is really alive ?’’ 

‘¢ At present,’’ said the Italian. ‘* But we must make haste 
to save him. Remember, O seller of skins, that I would not 
give two farthings for yours if in the whole course of your 
life you breathe one word of what I am about to tell you.’’ 

‘¢ The warning is not needed, master. I have been furrier 
to the Court since the time of the late King Louis XII., and 
this is the fourth reign I have lived under.’’ 

*¢ And you may soon say the fifth,’’ replied Ruggieri. 

‘¢ What do you know of my son ?”’ 

‘© Well, he has been through the torture chamber.”’ 

‘¢ Poor boy !’’ sighed the old man, looking up to heaven. 

‘‘His knees and ankles are a little damaged, but he has 
gained royal protection, which will be over him as long as he 
lives,’’ the Florentine added, on seeing the father’s horror. 
‘‘Your little Christophe has done good service to our great 
Queen Catherine. If we can get your son out of the clutches 
of the cardinal, you will see him councilor in the Parlement 
yet. And aman would let his bones be broken three times 
over to find himself in the good graces of that beloved sover- 
eign—a real genius she, who will triumph over every obstacle. 

‘*T have cast the horoscope of the Duc de Guise ; he will 
be killed within a year. Come now, Christophe did meet the 
Prince de Condé——’”’ 

‘You know the future, do you not know the past?”’ the 
furrier put in. 

‘«<T am not questioning you, I am informing you, goodman. 
Well, your son will be placed to-morrow where the Prince 


176 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


will pass by. If he recognizes him, or if the Prince recog- 
nizes your son, Monsieur de Condé forfeits his head. As to 
what would become of his accomplice—God only knows! 
But be easy. Neither your son nor the Prince is doomed to 
die; I have read their destiny; they will live. But by what 
means they may escape I know not. Now we will do what we 
can, apart from the certainty of my calculations. Monsieur 
de Condé shall get a prayer-book to-morrow, delivered to him 
by a safe hand, in which he shall find a warning! God 
grant that your son may be secretive, for he can have no 
warning! And a mere flash of recognition would cost the 
Prince his life. Thus, although the Queen-mother has every 
reason to depend on Christophe’s fidelity 3 

‘*He has been put to cruel tests,’’ cried the furrier. 

‘*Do not speak in that way. Do you suppose that the 
Queen is dancing for joy? She is indeed going to take her 
raeasures exactly as though the Guises had decided on the 
Prince’s death; and she is wise, that shrewd and prudent 
Queen! Now she counts on you to help her in every way. 
You have some influence in the ‘ Third Estate,’ where you are 
the representative of the Guilds of Paris; and, even if the 
Guisards should promise to set your son at liberty, try to 
deceive them and stir up your class against the Princes of 
Lorraine. Vote for the Queen-mother as Regent; the King 
of Navarre will give his assent to that publicly, to-morrow, in 
the Assembly.’’ 

‘But the King ?”’ 

‘¢The King will die,’’ said Ruggieri; ‘‘I have read it in 
the stars. What the Queen requires of you in the Assembly 
is very simple; but she needs a greater service from you than 
that. You maintained the great Ambroise Paré while he was 
a student ; you are his friend é: 

‘¢ Ambroise loves the Duc de Guise in these days better than 
he loves me,’’ said the furrier. ‘‘ And he is right; he owes 
his place to him, Still, he is faithful to the King. And, 








‘ . ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 177 


although he has a leaning toward the Reformation, he will do 
nothing but his duty.’’ 

‘*A plague on all honest men!’”’ cried the Florentine. 
‘«¢ Ambroise boasted this evening that he could pull the little 
King through. If the King recovers his health, the Guises 
must triumph, the Princes are dead men, the House of Bourbon 
is extinct, we go back to Florence, your son is hanged, and 
the Guises will make short work of the rest of the royal 
family——”’ 

‘¢Great God!’’ cried Lecamus. 

“*Do not exclaim in that way; it is like a citizen who 
knows nothing of Court manners; but go forthwith to Am- 
broise, and find out what he means to do to save the King. 
If it seems at all certain, come and tell me what the operation 
is in which he has such faith.”’ 

*¢ But ”? Lecamus began. 

‘Obey me blindly, my good friend, otherwise you will be 
' dazed.’’ 

‘* He is right,’’ thought the furrier. 

And he went off to the King’s surgeon, who lived in an 
inn in the Place du Martroi. 





At this juncture Catherine de’ Medici found herself, politi- 
cally speaking, in the same extremities as she had been in 
when Christophe had seen her at Blois. ‘Though she had 
inured herself to the struggle and had exerted her fine intel- 
lect in that first defeat, her situation, though precisely the 
same now as then, was even more critical and dangerous than 
at the time of the riots at Amboise. Events had grown in 
magnitude, and the Queen had grown with them. Though 
she seemed to proceed in agreement with the Princes of 
Lorraine, Catherine held the threads of a conspiracy skill- 
fully plotted against her terrible associates, and was only 
waiting for a favorable moment to drop her mask. 

The cardinal had just found himself deceived by Catherine. 

12 


178 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


The crafty Italian had seen in the younger branch of the 
royal family an obstacle she could use to check the preten- 
sions of the Guises; and, in spite of the counsel of the two 
Gondis, who advised her to leave the Guises to act with what 
violence they could against the Bourbons, she had, by warn- 
ing the Queen of Navarre, brought to naught the plot to 
seize Béarn concerted by the Guises with the King of Spain. 
As this State secret was known only to themselves and to 
Catherine, the Princes of Lorraine were assured of her be- 
trayal, and they wished to send her back to Florence ; but to 
secure proofs of Catherine’s treachery to the State-—the House 
of Lorraine was the State—the Duke and cardinal had just 
made her privy to their scheme for making away with the 
King of Navarre. 

The precautions which were immediately taken by Antoine 
de Bourbon proved to the brothers that this secret, known 
but to three people, had been divulged by the Queen-mother. 
The Cardinal de Lorraine accused Catherine of her breach 
of faith in the presence of the King, threatening her with 
banishment if any fresh indiscretions on her part should im- 
peril the State. Catherine, seeing herself in imminent danger, 
was compelled to act as a high-handed sovereign. She gave 
ample proof indeed of her fine abilities, but it must also be 
confessed that she was well served by the friends she trusted. 

L’ H6pital sent her a letter in these terms: 


‘*Do not allowa Prince of the Blood to be killed bya 
committee, or you will soon be carried off yourself.’’ 


Catherine sent Birague to le Vignay, desiring the chan- 
cellor to come to the Assembly of the States-General, although 
he was in banishment. Birague returned the same evening 
with |’H6pital, halting within three leagues of Orleans, and 
the chancellor thus declared himself on the side of the 
Queen-mother. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 179 


Chiverni, whose fidelity was with good reason regarded as 
doubtful by the Guises, had fled from Orleans, and by a 
forced march, which was nearly his death, he reached Ecouen 
in ten hours. He there told the Connétable de Montmor- 
ency of the danger his nephew the Prince de Condé was in, 
and of the encroachments of the Guises. Anne de Mont- 
morency, furious at learning that the Prince owed his life 
merely to the sudden illness of which Francis II. was dying, 
marched up with fifteen hundred horse and a hundred gentle- 
men under arms. The more effectually to surprise the Guises, 
he had avoided Paris, coming from Ecouen to Corbeil, and 
from Corbeil to Pithiviers by the valley of the Essonne. 

‘*Man to man, and both to pull, leaves to each but little 
wool!’’ he said, on the occasion of this dashing advance. 

Anne de Montmorency, who had been the preserver of 
France when Charles V. invaded Provence, and the Duc de 
Guise, who had checked the Emperor’s second attempt at 
_ Metz, were, in fact, the two greatest French warriors of their 
time. 

Catherine had waited for the right moment to stir up the 
hatred of the man whom the Guises had overthrown. ‘The 
Marquis de Simeuse, in command of the town of Gien, on 
hearing of the advance of so considerable a force as the 
connétable brought with him, sprang to horse, hoping to 
warn the Duke in time. The Queen-mother, meanwhile, cer- 
tain that the connétable would come to his nephew’s rescue 
and confident of the chancellor’s devotion to the royal cause, 
had fanned the hopes and encouraged the spirit of the Re- 
formed party. The Colignys and the adherents of the imper- 
iled House of Bourbon had made common cause with the 
Queen-mother’s partisans ; a coalition between various antag- 
onistic interests, attacked by a common foe, was silently 
formed in the Assembly of the States, where the question 
was boldly broached of making Catherine Regent of France 
in the event of the young King’s death. Catherine herself, 


180 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


whose faith in astrology was far greater than her belief in 
church dogmas, had ventured to extremes against her foes 
when she saw her son dying at the end of the time fixed as 
his term of life by the famous soothsayer brought to the cha- 
teau de Chaumont by Nostradamus. 

A few days before the terrible close of his reign, Francis 
II. had chosen to go out on the Loire, so as not to be in the 
town at the hour of the Prince de Condé’s intended execu- 
tion. Having surrendered the Prince’s head to the Cardinal 
de Lorraine, he feared a riot quite as much as he dreaded 
the supplications of the Princesse de Condé. As he was 
embarking, a fresh breeze, such as often sweeps the Loire at 
the approach of winter, gave him so violent an earache that 
he was forced to return home; he went to bed, never to leave 
it alive. 

In spite of the disagreement of the physicians, who, all 
but Chapelain, were his enemies and opponents, Ambroise 
Paré maintained that an abscess had formed in the head, and 
that if no outlet were pierced the chances of the King’s 
death were greater every day. 

In spite of the late hour and the rigorous enforcement of 
the curfew at that time in Orleans, which was ruled as ina 
state of siege, Paré’s lamp was shining in his window where 
he was studying. Lecamus called to him from below; and 
when he had announced his name, the surgeon gave orders 
that his old friend should be admitted. 

**You give yourself no rest, Ambroise, and while saving 
the lives of others you will wear out your own,’’ said the 
furrier as he went in. 

Indeed, there sat the surgeon, his books open, his instru- 
ments lying about, and before him a skull not long since 
buried, dug up from the grave, and perforated. 

‘*T must save the King.’’ 

‘Then you are very sure you can, Ambroise?’’ said the 
old man, shuddering. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 181 


‘¢ As sureasIam alive. The King, my good old friend, has 
some evil humor festering on his brain, which will fill it up, 
and the danger is pressing; but by piercing the skull I let 
the matter out and free his head. I have already performed 
this operation three times; it was invented by a Piedmon- 
tese, and I have been so lucky as to improve upon it. 
The first time it was at the siege of Metz, on Monsieur de 
Pienne, whom I got out of the scrape, and who has only been 
all the wiser for it ;-the second time it saved the life of a poor 
man on whom I wished to test the certainty of this daring 
operation to which Monsieur de Pienne had submitted; the 
third time was on a gentleman in Paris, who is now perfectly 
well. Trepanning—for that is the name given to it—is as yet 
little known. The sufferers object to it on the score of the 
imperfection of the instrument, but that I have been able to 
improve. So now I am experimenting on this head, to be 
sure of not failing to-morrow on the King’s.” 

‘*' You must be very sure of yourself, for your head will be 
in danger if you ie 

‘*T will wager my life that he is cured,’’ replied Paré, with 
the confidence of genius. ‘‘Oh, my good friend, what is it 
to make a hole in a skull with due care? It is what soldiers 
do every day with no care at all.’’ 

“But do you know, my boy,’’ said the citizen, greatly 
daring, ‘‘ that if you save the King, you ruin France? Do you 
know that your instrument will place the crown of the Valois 
on the head of a Prince of Lorraine, calling himself the direct 
heir of Charlemagne? Do you know that surgery and politics 
are, at this moment, at daggers drawn? Yes, the triumph of 
your genius will be the overthrow of your religion. If the 
Guises retain the Regency, the blood of the Reformers will 
flow in streams! Bea great citizen rather than a great sur- 
geon, and sleep through to-morrow morning, leaving the 
King’s room free to those leeches who, if they do not save the 
King, will save France.’’ 





182 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC1. 


<I!’ cried Paré. ‘‘I—leave a man to die when I can 
cure him? Never! If I am to be hanged for a Calvinist, I 
will go to the castle, all the same, right early to-morrow. Do 
you not know that the only favor I mean to ask, when I have 
savedt he King, is your Christophe’s life? That will surely 
be a moment when Queen Mary can refuse me nothing.”’ 

‘‘Alas, my friend, has not the little King already refused 
the Princesse de Condé any pardon for herhusband? Do not 
kill your religion by enabling the man to live who ought to 
aie.?* 

*‘Are you going to puzzle yourself by trying to find out how 
God means to dispose of things in the future?’’ asked Paré. 
‘* Honest folk have but one motto—‘ Do your duty, come what 
may.’ I did this at Calais when I set my foot on the Grand 
Master; I risked being cut down by all his friends and at- 
tendants, and here I am, surgeon to the King; I am a Re- 
former, and yet I can call the Guises my friends. I will save 
the King! ’’ cried the surgeon, with the sacred enthusiasm 
of conviction that genius knows, ‘‘and God will take care of 
France! ”’ 

There was a knock at the door, and a few minutes later one 
of Ambroise Paré’s servants gave a note to Lecamus, who read 
aloud these ominous words : 


‘‘A scaffold is being erected at the Convent of the Récol- 
lets for the beheading of the Prince de Condé to-morrow.”’ 


Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other, both over- 
powered with horror. 

‘<T will go and make sure,”’ said the furrier, bidding Am- 
broise Paré adieu. 

Out on the square, Ruggieri took Lecamus by the arm, ask- 
ing what was Paré’s secret for saving the King; but the old 
man, fearing some treachery, insisted on going to see the 
scaffold. So the astrologer and the furrier went together 


- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 183 


to the Récollets, where, in fact, they found carpenters at 
work by torchlight. 

‘* Heyday, my friend,’’ said old Lecamus to one of them; 
‘¢what business is this? ’’ 

‘¢ We are preparing to hang some heretics, since the bleed- 
ing at Amboise did not cure them,’’ said a young friar, who 
was superintending the workmen. 

‘* Monseigneur the cardinal does well,’’ replied the prudent 
Ruggieri. ‘‘ But in my country we do even better.’’ 

‘¢ What do you do?’’ 

‘We burn them, brother.”’ 

Lecamus was obliged to lean on the astrologer; his legs 
refused to carry him, for he thought that his son might next 
day be swinging on one of those gibbets. The poor old man 
stood between two sciences—astrology and medicine; each 
promised to save his son, for whom the scaffold was visibly 
rising. In this confusion of mind he was as wax in the hands 


_ of the Florentine. 


‘¢ Well, my most respectable vendor of furs, what have you 
to say to these pleasantries of Lorraine?’’ asked Ruggieri. 

‘*Woe the day! You know I would give my own skin to 
see my boy’s safe and sound.”’ 

‘¢ That is what I call talking like a skinner,’’ replied the 
Italian. ‘‘ But if you will explain to me the operation that 
Ambroise proposes to perform on the King, I will guarantee 
your son’s life.”’ 

‘¢ Truly ?’’ cried the old furrier. 

‘¢ What shall I swear by?”’ said Ruggieri. 

On this the unhappy old man repeated his conversation 
with Paré to the Italian, who was off, leaving the disconsolate 
father in the road the instant he had heard the great surgeon’s 
secret. 

‘¢Whom the devil does he mean mischief to?’’ cried Le- 
camus, as he saw Ruggieri running at his utmost speed toward 
the Place de 1’Estape. 


184 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Lecamus knew nothing of the terrible scene which was 
going on by the King’s bedside, and which had led to the 
order being given for the erection of the scaffold for the 
Prince, who had been sentenced in default, as it were, though 
his execution was postponed for the moment by the King’s 
illness. 

There was no one in the hall, on the stairs, or in the court- 
yard of the bailiff’s house but those on actual duty. The 
crowd of courtiers had resorted to the lodgings of the King 
of Navarre, who, by the law of the land, was Regent. The 
French nobles, terrified indeed by the insolence of the Guises, 
felt an impulse to close their ranks around the chief of the 
younger branch, seeing that the Queen-mother was subservient 
to the Guises, and not understanding her Italian policy. 
Antoine de Bourbon, faithful to his “secret compact with 
Catherine, was not to renounce his claim to the Regency in 
her favor until the States-General should have voted on the 
question. 

This absolute desertion had struck the Grand. Master when, 
on his return from a walk through the town—as a precau- 
tionary measure—he found no one about the King but the 
friends dependent on his fortunes. The room where Francis 
II.’s bed had been placed adjoins the great hall of the bailiff’s 
residence, and was at that time lined with oak paneling. The 
ceiling, formed of narrow boards, skillfully adjusted and 
painted, showed an arabesque pattern in blue on a gold 
ground, and a piece of it, pulled down about fifty years ago, 
has been preserved by a collector of antiquities. This room, 
hung with tapestry and the floor covered with carpet, was so 
dark that the burning tapers scarcely gave it light. The 
enormous bedstead, with four columnar posts and silk cur- 
tains, looked like a tomb. On one side of the bed, by the 
King’s pillow, were Queen Mary and the Cardinal de Lor- 
raine ; on- the other sat Catherine in .an armchair. The 
physician-in-ordinary, the famous Jean Chapelain, afterward 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 185 


in attendance on Charles IX., was standing by the fireplace. 
Perfect silence reigned. 

The young King, pale and slight, lost in the sheets, was 
hardly to be seen, with his small, puckered face on the pillow. 
The Duchesse de Guise, seated on a stool, was supporting 
Mary Stewart; and near Catherine, in a window recess, 
Madame de Fieschi was watching the Queen-mother’s looks 
and gestures, for she fully understood the great peril of her 
position. 

In the great hall, notwithstanding the late hour, Monsieur 
de Cypierre, the Duc d’Orléans’ tutor, appointed to be gov- 
ernor of the town, occupied a chimney-corner with the two 
Gondis. Cardinal de Tournon, who at this crisis had taken 
part with Queen Catherine, on finding himself treated as an 
inferior by the Cardinal de Lorraine, whose equal he un- 
_ doubtedly was in the church, was conversing in a low voice 
with the brothers Gondi. The Maréchal de Vieilleville and 
Monsieur de Saint-André, keeper of the seals, were discussing 
in whispers the imminent danger of the Guises. 

The Duc de Guise crossed the hall, glancing hastily about 
him, and bowed to the Duc d’Orléans, whom he recognized. 

‘* Monseigneur,’’ said he, ‘‘ this may give you a lesson in 
the knowledge of men. The Catholic nobility of the king- 
dom have crowded round a heretic prince, believing that the 
States assembled will place the Regency in the hands of the 
heir to the traitor who so long kept your illustrious grand- 
father a prisoner.’’ 

And after this speech, which was calculated to make a deep 
impression on a prince’s mind, he went into the bedroom 
where the young King was lying, not so much asleep as heavily 
drowsy. As a rule, the Duc de Guise had the art of over- 
coming, by his affable expression, the sinister appearance of 
his scarred features ; but at this moment he could not force a 
smile, seeing the instrument of power quite broken. The 
cardinal, whose civic courage was equal to his brother’s mili- 


186 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


tary valor, came forward a step or two to meet the lieutenant- 
general. 

“‘ Robertet believes that little Pinard has been bought over 
by the Queen-mother,’’ he said in his ear, as he led him back 
into the hall. ‘‘ He has been made use of to work on the 
members of the Assembly.”’ 

‘‘Bah! what matters our being betrayed by a secretary, 
when there is treason everywhere ?’’ cried the Duke. ‘‘ The 
town is for the Reformers, and we are on the eve of a revolt. 
Yes! the Guépims are malcontents,’’ he added, giving the 
people of Orleans their common nickname, ‘‘ and if Paré can- 
not save the King, we shall see a desperate outbreak. Before 
long we shall have to lay siege to Orleans, which is a vermin’s 
nest of Huguenots.’’ 

‘*In the last minute,’’ said the cardinal, ‘‘I have been 
watching that Italian woman, who sits there without a spark 
of feeling. She is waiting for her son’s death, God forgive 
her! I wonder whether it would not be well to arrest her 
and the King of Navarre too.’”’ 

‘¢Tt is more than enough to have the Prince de Condé in 
prison,’’ replied the Duke. : 

The sound of a horse ridden at top-speed came up from the 
gate. The two Princes went to the window, and, by the light 
of the gatekeeper’s torch and of the cresset that was always 
burning under the gateway, the Duke recognized in the rider’s 
hat the famous cross of Lorraine, which the cardinal had made 
the badge of their partisans. He sent one of the men-at- 
arms, who stood in the anteroom, to say that the new-comer 
was to be admitted ; and he went to. the head of the stairs to 
meet him, followed by his brother. 

‘‘ What is the news, my dear Simeuse ?’’ asked the Duke, 
with the charming manner he always had for a soldier, as he 
recognized the Commandant of Gien. 

‘‘The connétable is entering Pithiviers; he left Ecouen 
with fifteen hundred horse and a hundred gentlemen se 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 187 


‘¢ Have they any following ?’’ said the Duke. 

‘¢Yes, monseigneur,’’ replied Simeuse. ‘‘ There are two 
thousand six hundred of them in all. Some say that Thoré 
is behind with a troop of infantry. If Montmorency amuses 
himself with waiting for his son, you have time before you to 
undo him.”’ 

*¢ And that is all you know? Are his motives for this rush 
to arms commonly reported ?’”’ 

‘¢ Anne speaks as little as he writes; do you go and meet 
him, brother, while I will greet him here with his nephew’s 
head,’’ said the cardinal, ordering an attendant to fetch 
Robertet. 

‘« Vieilleville,” cried the Duke to the marshal, who came 
in, ‘the Connétable de Montmorency has dared to take up 
arms. If I go out to meet him, will you be responsible for 
keeping order in the town?”’ 

‘‘The instant you are out of it, the townsfolk will rise; 
and who can foresee the issue of a fray between horsemen and 
citizens in such narrow streets?’’ replied the marshal. 

‘“*My lord!’’ said Robertet, flying up the stairs, ‘the 
chancellor is at the gates and insists on coming in; are we 
to admit him? ’”’ 

‘‘ Yes, admit him,”’ said the Cardinal de Lorraine. ‘‘ The 
constable and the chancellor together would be too danger- 
ous ; we must keep them apart. We were finely tricked by the 
Queen-mother when we elected 1’H6pital to that office.” 

Robertet nodded to a captain who awaited the reply at the 
foot of the stairs, and returned quickly to take the cardinal’s 
orders. 

‘My lord,’’ said he, making a last effort, ‘<I take the 
liberty of representing to you that the sentence requires the 
approval of the King in Council. If you violate the law for 
a Prince of the Blood, it will not be respected in favor of a 
cardinal or of a Duc de Guise.”’ 

‘‘Pinard has disturbed your mind, Robertet,’’ said the 


188 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


cardinal sternly. ‘‘ Do you not know that the King signed 
the warrant on the day when he went out, leaving it to us to 
carry it out?’’ 

‘¢Though you are almost requiring my head of me when 
you give me this duty—which, however, will be that of the 
town-provost—I obey, my lord.’’ 

The Grand Master heard the debate without wincing; but 
he took his brother by the arm and led him to a corner of 
the hall. 

‘‘Of course,’’ said he, ‘‘the direct heirs of Charlemagne 
have the right to take back the crown which was snatched 
from their family by Hugues Capet; but—can they? The 
pear is not ripe. Our nephew is dying, and all the Court is 
gone over to the King of Navarre.”’ 

‘The King’s heart failed him; but for that, the Béarnais 
would have been stabbed,’’ replied the cardinal, ‘‘and we 
could easily have disposed of the children.”’ 

‘‘ We are in a bad position here,’’ said the Duke. ‘‘ The 
revolt in the town will be supported by the States-General. 
L’H6pital, whom we have befriended so well and whose eleva- 
tion Queen Catherine opposed, is now our foe, and we need 
the law on our side. The Queen-mother has too many adhe- 
rents now to allow of our sending her away. And, beside, 
there are three more boys!”’ 

‘¢ She is no longer a mother; she is nothing but a queen,’’ 
said the cardinal. ‘‘In my opinion, this is the very moment 
to be rid of her. Energy, and again energy! that is what I 
prescribe.”’ 

Having said this, the cardinal went back into the King’s 
room, and the Duke followed him. The prelate then went 
straight up to Catherine. 

‘‘The papers found on La Sagne, the Prince de Condé’s 
secretary, have been communicated to you,”’ said he. ‘‘ You 
know that the Bourbons mean to dethrone your children ?”’ 

‘¢T know it all,’’ said the Queen. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, 189 


“Well, then, will you not have the King of Navarre 
arrested ?’’ 

‘« There is a lieutenant-general of the kingdom,” replied she. 

At this moment Francis complained of the most violent 
pain in his ear, and began to moan lamentably. The physi- 
cian left the fireplace, where he was warming himself, and 
came to examine the patient’s head. 

‘‘Well, monsieur?’’ said the Grand Master, addressing 
him. 

“I dare not apply a compress to draw the evil humors. 
Master Ambroise has undertaken to save his majesty by an 
operation, and I should annoy him by doing so.”’ 

‘* Put it off till to-morrow,’’ said Catherine calmly, ‘‘ and 
be present, all of you medical men; for you know what 
calumnies the death of a prince gives ground for.” 

She kissed her son’s hands and withdrew. 

‘* How coolly that audacious trader’s daughter can speak of 
the Dauphin’s death, poisoned as he was by Montecuculi, a 
Florentine of her suite!’’ cried Mary Stewart. 

‘¢ Marie,’’ said the little King, ‘‘ my grandfather never cast 
a suspicion on her innocence.’’ 

‘¢Can we not hinder that woman from coming here to- 
morrow ?’’ said the Queen in an undertone to her two uncles. 

‘‘What would become of us if the King should die?’”’ 
replied the cardinal. ‘‘ Catherine would hurl us all into his 
grave.”’ ; 

And so that night the question stood plainly stated between 
Catherine de’ Medici and the House of Lorraine. The arrival 
of the chancellor and the Connétable de Montmorency pointed 
to rebellion, and the dawn of the morrow would prove de- 
cisive. 

On the following day the Queen-mother was the first to ap- 
pear. She found no one in her son’s room but Mary Stewart, 
pale and fatigued from having passed the night in prayer by 
the bedside. ‘The Duchesse de Guise had kept the Queen 


190 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


company, and the maids of honor had relieved each other. 
The young King was asleep. 

Neither the Duke nor the cardinal had yet appeared. The 
prelate, more daring than the soldier, had spent this last night, 
it is said, in vehement argument, without being able to in- 
duce the Duke to proclaim himself King. With the States- 
General sitting in the town, and the prospect of a battle to be 
fought with the constable, the Balafré did not think the op- 
portunity favorable ; he refused to arrest the Queen-mother, 
the chancellor, Cardinal de Tournon, the Gondis, Ruggieri, 
and Birague, in face of the revolt that would inevitably result 
from such violent measures. He made his brother’s schemes 
dependent on the life of Francis II. 

Perfect silence reigned in the King’s bedchamber. Cath- 
erine, attended by Madame de Fieschi, came to the bedside 
and gazed at her son with an admirable assumption of grief. 
She held her handkerchief to her eyes and retreated to the 
window, where Madame de Fieschi brought her a chair. 
From thence she could look down into the courtyard. 

It had been agreed between Catherine and the Cardinal de 
Tournon that if Montmorency got safely into the town, he, 
the cardinal, would come to her, accompanied by the two 
Gondis; in case of disaster, he was to come alone. At nine 
in the morning the two Princes of Lorraine, accompanied by 
their suite, who remained in the hall, came to the King’s room. 
The captain on duty had informed them that Ambroise Paré 
had but just arrived with Chapelain and three other physi- 
cians, prompted by Catherine de’ Medici, and all hating Am- 
broise Paré. 

In a few minutes the great hall of the bailliage presented. 
precisely the same appearance as the guardroom at Blois on 
the day when the Duc de Guise was appointed lieutenant- 
general of the kingdom, and when Christophe was tortured ; 
with only this difference, that then love and glee reigned in 
the royal rooms, and that the Guises were triumphant ; 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 191 


whereas now death and grief prevailed, and the Princes of 
Lorraine felt the power slipping from their grasp. 

The maids of honor of the two Queens were grouped on 
opposite sides of the great fireplace, where an immense fire 
was blazing. The room was full of courtiers. 

The news, repeated no one knows by whom, of a bold plan 
of Ambroise Paré’s for saving the King’s life, brought in 
every gentleman who had any right to appear at Court. The 
outer steps of the house and the courtyard were thronged with 
anxious groups. The scaffold erected for the Prince, opposite 
the convent of the Récollets, astonished all the nobles. People 
spoke in whispers, and here, as at Blois, the conversation 
was a medley of serious and frivolous subjects, of grave and 
trivial talk. They were beginning to feel used to turmoils, 
to sudden rebellion, to a rush to arms, to revolts, to the great 
and sudden events which marked the long period during which 
the House of Valois was dying out, in spite of Queen Cath- 
erine’s efforts. Deep silence was kept for some distance out- 
side the bedroom door, where two men-at-arms were on guard, 
with two pages, and the captain of the Scotch company. 

Antoine de Bourbon,* a prisoner in his lodgings, finding 
himself neglected, understood the hopes of the courtiers; he 
was overwhelmed at hearing of the preparations made during 
the night for his brother’s execution. 

In front of the hall fireplace stood one of the finest and 
grandest figures of his time, the Chancellor de 1’ Hé6pital, in 
his crimson robes bordered with ermine, and wearing his 
square cap, in right of his office. This brave man, regarding 
his benefactors as the leaders of a rebellion, had espoused the 
cause of his king, as represented by the Queen-mother ; and, 
at the risk of his head, he had gone to Ecouen to consult the 
Connétable de Montmorency. No one dared to disturb the 
meditations in which he was plunged. Robertet, the secre- 
tary of state, two marshals of France, Vieilleville and Saint- 

* Antony, King of Navarre, husband of Jeanne d’Albret. 


192 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


André, and the keeper of the seals, formed a group in front 
of the chancellor. 

The men of the Court were not actually laughing, but their 
tone was sprightly, especially among those who were disaffected 
to the Guises. 

The cardinal had at last secured Stewart, the Scotchman 
who had murdered President Minard, and was arranging for 
his trial at Tours. He had also confined in the Castles of 
Blois and of Tours a considerable number of gentlemen who 
had seemed compromised, to inspire a certain degree of terror 
in the nobles; they, however, were not terrified, but saw in 
the Reformation a fulcrum for the love of resistance they de- 
rived from a feeling of their inborn equality with the King. 
Now, the prisoners at Blois had contrived to escape, and, by a 
singular fatality, those who had been shut up at Tours had 
just followed their example. 

‘* Madame,’’ said the Cardinal de Chatillon to Madame de 
Fieschi, ‘‘if any one takes an interest in the prisoners from 
Tours, they are in the greatest danger.”’ 

On hearing this speech, the chancellor looked round at the 
group of the elder Queen’s maids of honor. 

‘Yes, for young Desvaux, the Prince de Condé’s equerry, 
who was imprisoned at Tours, added a bitter jest to his 
escape. He is said to have written a note to Messieurs de 
Guise to this effect: 


‘¢ «We have heard of the escape of your prisoners at Blois ; 
it has grieved us so much that we are about to run after them; 
we will bring them back to you as soon as we have arrested 
them.’ ”’ 


Though he relished this pleasantry, the chancellor looked 
sternly at Monsieur de Chatillon. 

At this instant louder voices were heard in the King’ s bed- 
chamber. The two marshals, with Robertet and the chancellor, 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI 193 


went forward, for it was not merely a question of life and death 
to the King ; everybody was in the secret of the danger to the 
chancellor, to Catherine, and to her adherents. The silence 
that ensued was absolute. 

Ambroise had examined the King; the moment seemed 
favorable for the operation; if it were not performed he 
might die at any moment. As soon as the brothers de Guise 
came in, he explained to them the causes of the King’s suf- 
ferings, and demonstrated that in such extremities trepanning 
was absolutely necessary. He only awaited the decision of the 
physicians. 

‘¢ Pierce my son’s skull as if it were a board, and with that 
horrible instrument ! ’’ cried Catherine de’ Medici. ‘‘ Master 
Ambroise, I will not permit it.” 

The doctors were consulting, but Catherine spoke so loud 
that, as she intended, her words were heard in the outer 

room. 

“But, madame, if that is the only hope of saving him?” 
said Mary Stewart, weeping. 

‘¢ Ambroise,’’ said Catherine, ‘‘ remember that you answer 
for the King with your head.”’ 

‘‘We are opposed to the means proposed by Master Am- 
broise,’’ said the three physicians. ‘‘ The King may be saved 
by injecting a remedy into the ear which will release the 
humors through that passage.’’ 

The Duc de Guise, who was studying Catherine’s face, sud- 
denly went up to her and led her into the window-bay, apart 
from the throng. 

‘‘You, madame,’’ said he, ‘‘ wish your son to die; you are 
in collusion with your enemies, and that since we came from 
Blois. This morning Councilor Viole told your furrier’s 
son that the Prince de Condé was to be beheaded. That 
young man, who, under torture, had denied all knowledge of 
the Prince de Condé, gave him a farewell greeting as he 
passed the window of the lad’s prison. You looked on at 

13 


194 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


your hapless accomplice’s sufferings with royal indifference. 
Now, you are opposed to your eldest son’s life being saved. 
You will force us to believe that the death of the Dauphin, 
which placed the crown on the head of the late King, was 
not natural, but that Montecuculi was your & 

‘Monsieur le Chancelier! ’’ Catherine called out, and at 
this signal Madame de Fieschi threw open the double doors 
of the bedchamber. 

The persons assembled in the hall could thus see the whole 
scene in the King’s room: the little King, deadly pale, his 
features sunk, his eyes dim, but repeating the word ‘‘ Marie,”’ 
while he held the hand of the young Queen, who was weep- 
ing ; the Duchesse de Guise standing, terrified by Catherine’s 
audacity ; the two Princes of Lorraine, not less anxious, but 
keeping close to the Queen-mother, and resolved to have her 
arrested by Maillé-Brézé; and, finally, the great surgeon 
Ambroise Paré, with the King’s physician. He stood holding 
his instruments, but not daring to perform the operation, for 
which perfect quiet was as necessary as the approbation of the 
medical authorities. 

“‘ Monsieur le Chancelier,’’ said Catherine, ‘‘ Messieurs de 
Guise wish to authorize a strange operation on the King’s 
person. Ambroise proposes to perforate his head. I, as his 
mother, and one of the commission of Regency, protest 
against what seems to me to be high treason. The three phy- 
sicians are in favor of an injection which, to me, seems 
quite as efficacious and less dangerous than the cruel process 
recommended by Ambroise.”’ 

At these words there was a dull murmur in reply. The 
cardinal admitted the chancellor, and then shut the bedroom 
doors. 

«‘But Iam lieutenant-general of the realm,’’ said the Duc 
de Guise, ‘‘and you must understand, Monsieur de Chance- 
lier, that Ambroise, surgeon to his majesty, answers for the 
King’s life.’” 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 195 


‘Well, since this is the state of affairs,’’ said the great 
Ambroise Paré, ‘‘ I know what to be doing.”’ 

He put out his arm over the bed. 

‘‘This bed and the King are mine,”’ said he. ‘I consti- 
tute myself the sole master, and singly responsible ; I know 
the duties of my office, and I will operate on the King with- 
out the physicians’ sanction.’’ 

‘¢Save him!’’ cried the cardinal, ‘and you shall be the 
richest man in afoul * 

‘Only go on,’’ said Mary Stewart, pressing Paré’s hand. 

‘‘T cannot: interfere,’’ said the chancellor, ‘‘ but I Shall 
record the Queen-mother’s protest.’’ 

** Robertet,’’ the Duc de Guise called out. 

Robertet came in, and the Duke pointed to the chan- 
cellor. 

“You are Chancellor of France,’’ he said, ‘in the place 
of this felon. Monsieur de Maillé, take Monsieur de 1’H6- 
pital to prison with the Prince de Condé. As to you, mad- 
ame,’’ and he turned to Catherine, ‘‘ your protest will not 
be recognized, and you would do well to remember that 
such actions need the support of adequate force. I am 
acting as a faithful and loyal subject of King Francis II., 
my sovereign. Proceed, Ambroise,’’ he said to the sur- 
geon. 

‘Monsieur de Guise,’’ said l’Hépital, “if you use any 
violence, either on the person of the King or on that of his 
chancellor, remember that in the hall without there is enough 
French nobility to arrest all traitors.’’ 

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,”’ said the surgeon, ‘‘ if you pro- 
long this debate, you may as well shout ‘ Vive Charles IX.,’ 
for King Francis is dying.”’ 

Catherine stood unmoved, looking out of the window. 

‘‘ Well, then, we will use force to remain masters in the 
King’s bedroom,”’ said the cardinal, trying to keep the door; 
but he was startled and horrified, for the great hall was quite 


196 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


deserted. The Court, sure that the King was dying, had 
gone back to Antoine of Navarre. 

“¢Come; do it, do it!’’ cried Mary Stewart to Ambroise. 
“‘T and you, Duchess,’’ she said to Madame de Guise, ‘‘ will 
protect you.”’ 

“‘Nay, madame,”’ said Paré, ‘‘ my zeal carried me too far ; 
the doctors, with the exception of my friend Chapelain, are 
in favor of the injection; I must yield tothem. If I were 
physician and surgeon-in-chief, he could be saved! Give it 
to me,’’ he said, taking a small syringe from the hand of the 
chief physician and filling it. 

‘*Good God!’’ cried Mary Stewart; ‘‘I command you 





to 

‘‘ Alas! madame,’’ replied Paré, ‘‘I am subordinate to 
these gentlemen.”’ 

The young Queen and the Duchesse de Guise stood be- 
tween the surgeon and the doctors and the other persons 
present. The chief physician held the King’s head, and 
Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The two Princes 
of Lorraine were watchful; Robertet and Monsieur de Maillé 
stood motionless. At a sign from Catherine, Madame de Fi- 
eschi left the room unnoticed. At the same instant 1’ Hépital 
boldly threw open the door of the King’s bedroom. 

‘“‘T have arrived in the nick of time,’’ exclaimed a man, 
whose hasty steps rang through the hall, and who, in another 
minute, was at the door of the King’s room. ‘‘ What, gen- 
tlemen-! You thought to cut off my fine nephew, the Prince 
de Condé’s head? You have roused the lion from his lair, 
and here he is!’’ added the Connétable de Montmorency. 
‘¢ Ambroise, you are not to stir up my King’s brains with 
your instruments! The Kings of France do not allow them- 
_ selves to be knocked about in that way unless by their ene- 
mies’ sword in fair fight! The first Prince of the Blood, 
Antoine de Bourbon, the Prince de Condé, the Queen- 
mother, and the chancellor are all opposed to the operation.’’ 





yoo ."ee Nee ae 


\ 





YOUR MADAME, HAVE KILLED YOUR SON!” 
SAID MARY STEWART. 








ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC1. 197 


To Catherine’s great satisfaction, the King of Navarre and 
the Prince de Condé both made their appearance. 

‘‘What is the meaning of this?’’ said the Duc de Guise, 
laying his hand on his poniard. 

‘‘As lord high constable, I have dismissed all the sentinels 
from their posts. Blood and thunder! we are not in an ene- 
my’s country, I suppose. The King our master is surrounded 
by his subjects, and the States-General of the realm may de- 
liberate in perfect liberty. I have just come from the Assem- 
bly, gentlemen ; I laid before it the protest of my nephew de 
Condé, who has been rescued by three hundred gentlemen. 
You meant to let the royal blood and to decimate the nobility 
of France. Henceforth I shall not trust anything you pro- 
pose, Messieurs de Lorraine. And if you give the order for 
the King’s head to be opened, by this sword, which saved 
France from Charles V., I say it shall not be done——!”’ 

«¢ All the more so,’’ said Ambroise Paré, ‘‘ because it is too 
late, suffusion has begun.’’ 

‘‘Your reign is over, gentlemen,’’ said Catherine to the 
two Guises, seeing from Paré’s manner that there was now no 
hope. 

** You, madame, have killed your son!’’ said Mary Stewart, 
springing like a lioness from the bed to the window, and seiz- 
ing the Italian Queen by the arm with a vehement clutch. 

“¢My dear,’’ replied Catherine de’ Medici, with a keen, 
cold look that expressed the hatred she had suppressed for six 
months past, “‘ you, to whose violent passion this death is due, 
will now go to reign over your own Scotland—and you will go 
to-morrow. Iam now Regent in fact as well as in name.’’ 

The three physicians had made a sign to the Queen-mother. 

‘¢Gentlemen,’’ she went on, addressing the Guises, ‘‘ it is 
an understood thing between Monsieur de Bourbon—whom I 
hereby appoint lieutenant-general of the kingdom—and my- 
self that the conduct of affairs is our business. Come, Mon- 
sieur le Chancellor.’’ 


198 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘The King is dead!”’ said the Grand Master, obliged to 
carry out the functions of his office. 

‘God save King Charles IX.!’’ cried the gentlemen who 
had come with the King of Navarre, the Prince de Condé, 
and the constable. 

The ceremonies performed when a King of France dies 
were carried out in solitude. When the king-at-arms called 
out three times in the great hall, ‘‘ The King is dead!”’ after 
the official announcement by the Duc de Guise, there were 
but a few persons present to answer—‘‘ God save the King!”’ 

The Queen-mother, to whom the Countess Fieschi brought 
the Duc d’Orleans, now Charles IX., left the room leading 
the boy by the hand, and followed by the whole Court. Only 
the two Guises, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stewart, and 
Dayelle remained in the room where Francis II. had breathed 
his last, with two guards at the door, the Grand Master’s 
pages and the cardinal’s, and their two private secretaries. 

“Vive la France!’’ shouted some of the Reformers, a first 
cry of opposition. 

Robertet, who owed everything to the Duke and the car- 
dinal, terrified by their schemes and their abortive attempts, 
secretly attached himself to the Queen-mother, whom the am- 
bassadors of Spain,‘England, the German Empire, and Poland 
met on the stairs, at their head Cardinal Tournon, who had 
gone to call them after looking up from the courtyard to 
Catherine de’ Medici just as she was protesting against Am- 
broise Paré’s operation. 

“‘Well, the sons of Louis d’Outre-Mer,* the descendants of 
Charles de Lorraine, have proved cravens,’’ said the cardinal 
to the Duke. 

‘¢ They would have been packed off to Lorraine,’’ replied 
his brother. ‘I declare to you, Charles,’’ he went on, ‘if 
the crown were there for the taking, I would not put out my 
hand for it. That will be my son’s task.” 


* From over the sea, 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 199 


‘¢ Will he ever have the army and the church on his side 
as you have ?’”’ 

‘¢ He will have something better.’’ 

“What?” 

#s"T he people.” 

‘¢ And there is no one to mourn for him but me—the poor 
boy who loved me so well! ’’ said Mary Stewart, holding the 
cold hand of her first husband. 

‘* How can we be reconciled to the Queen?”’ said the 
cardinal. 

‘‘Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots,”’ said the 
Duchess. 

The clashing interests of the House of Bourbon, of Cath- 
erine, of the Guises, and of the Reformers produced such con- 
fusion in Orleans that it was not till three days after that the 
King’s body, quite forgotten where it lay, was placed in a 
coffin by obscure serving men, and carried to Saint-Denis in 
a covered vehicle, followed only by the Bishop of Senlis and 
two gentlemen. When this dismal little procession arrived 
at the town of Etampes, a follower of the Chancellor de 
l’H6pital attached to the hearse this bitter inscription, which 
history has recorded: ‘‘ Tanneguy du Chastel, where are you? 
Yet you, too, were French!’’ A stinging innuendo, strik- 
ing at Catherine, Mary Stewart, and the Guises. For what 
Frenchman does not know that Tanneguy du Chastel spent 
thirty thousand crowns (a million of francs in these days) on 
the obsequies of Charles VII., the founder and benefactor of 
his family ? 


As soon as the tolling bells announced the death of Francis 
II., and the Connétable de Montmorency had thrown open 
the gates of the town, Tourillon went up to his hayloft and 
made his way to a hiding-place. 

‘¢ What, can he be dead ?’’ exclaimed the glover. 

On hearing the voice, a man rose and replied, ‘‘Prét a 


200 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


”? 


servir’’ (‘Ready to serve,’’ or ‘‘ Ready, aye ready ’’), the 
watchword of the Reformers of Calvin’s sect. 

This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon related the 
events of the past week, during which he had left the preacher 
alone in his hiding-place with a twelve-ounce loaf for his sole 
sustenance. 

‘¢Be off to the Prince de Condé, brother, ask him for a 
safe-conduct for me, and find me a horse,’’ cried the preacher. 
‘*T must set out this moment.’’ 

‘¢ Write him a line, then, that I may be admitted.”’ 

‘« Here,’’ said Chaudieu, after writing a few lines, ‘‘ ask for 
a pass from the King of Navarre, for under existing circum- 
stances I must hasten to Geneva.”’ 

Within two hours all was ready, and the zealous minister 
was on his way to Geneva, escorted by one of the King of 
Navarre’s gentlemen, whose secretary Chaudieu was supposed 
to be, and who was the bearer of instructions to the Reformed 
party in Dauphiné. : 

Chaudieu’s sudden departure was at once permitted, to 
further the interests of Queen Catherine, who, to gain time, 
made a bold suggestion which was kept a profound secret. 
This startling scheme accounts for the agreement so unex- 
pectedly arrived at between the Queen and the leaders of the 
Protestant party. The crafty woman had, as a guarantee of 
her good faith, expressed a desire to heal the breach between 
the two churches in an assembly which could be neither a 
Synod, nor a Council, nor a Convocation, for which indeed 
a new name was needed, and, above all else, Calvin’s consent. 
It may be said in passing that, when this mystery came out, 
it led to the alliance of the Guises with the Connétable de 
Montmorency against Catherine and the King of Navarre—a 
strange coalition, known to history as the Triumvirate, be- 
cause the Maréchal de Saint-André was the third person in 
this purely Catholic combination, to which Catherine’s strange 
proposal for a meeting gave rise. The Guises were then en- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 201 


abled to judge very shrewdly of Catherine’s policy ; they saw 
that the Queen cared little enough for this assembly, and only 
wanted to temporize with her allies till Charles IX. should be 
of age ; indeed, they deceived Montmorency by making him 
believe in a collusion between Catherine and the Bourbons, 
while Catherine was taking them allin. The Queen, it will 
be seen, had in a short time made great strides. 

The spirit of argument and discussion which was then in 
the air was particularly favorable to this scheme. The Catho- 
lics and the Huguenots were all to shine in turn in this tour- 
nament of words. Indeed, that is exactly what happened. 
Is it not extraordinary that historians should have mistaken 
the Queen’s shrewdest craft for hesitancy? Catherine never 
went more directly to the end she had in view than when 
she seemed to have turned her back on it. So the King of 
Navarre, incapable of fathoming Catherine’s motives, dis- 
patched Chaudieu to Calvin; Chaudieu having secretly in- 
tended to watch the course of events at Orleans, where he ran, 
every hour, the risk of being seized and hanged without trial, 
like any man who had been condemned to banishment. 

At the rate of traveling then possible Chaudieu could not 
reach Geneva before the month of February, the negotiations 
could not be completed until March, and the meeting could 
not be called until the beginning of May, 1561. Catherine 
intended to amuse the Court meanwhile, and lull party-feeling 
by the King’s coronation, and by his first bed of justice in 
the Parlement when L’H6pital and de Thou passed the royal 
letter, by which Charles IX. intrusted the government of the 
kingdom to his mother, seconded by Antoine de Navarre as 
lieutenant-general of the realm—the weakest prince of his 
time. 

Was it not one of the strangest things of that day to see a 
whole kingdom in suspense for the Yea or Nay of a French 
citizen, risen from obscurity, and living at Geneva? The 
Pope of Rome held in check by the new Pope of Geneva? 


202 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


The two Princes of Lorraine, once so powerful, paralyzed by 
a brief concord between the first Prince of the Blood, the 
Queen-mother, and Calvin? Is it not one of the most preg- 
nant lessons that history has preserved to kings, a lesson that 
should teach them to judge of men, to give genius its due 
without any hesitation, and to seek it out, as Louis XIV. did, 
wherever God has hidden it? 

Calvin, whose real name was not Calvin, but Cauvin, was 
the son of a cooper at Noyon, in Picardy. Calvin’s birth- 
place accounts to a certain degree for the obstinacy mingled 
with eccentric irritability which characterized the arbiter of 
the destinies of France in the sixteenth century. No one is 
less known than this man, who was the maker of Geneva and 
of the spirit of its people. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who knew 
little of history, was utterly ignorant of this man’s influence 
on his Republic. 

At first, indeed, Calvin, dwelling in one of the humblest 
houses in the upper town, near the Protestant church of Saint- 
Pierre, over a carpenter’s shop—one point of resemblance 
between him and Robespierre—had no great authority in 
Geneva. His influence was for a long time checked by the 
hatred of the Genevese. 

In the sixteenth century Geneva could boast of Farel, one 
of those famous citizens who have remained unknown to the 
world, some of them even to Geneva itself. In the year 1537, 
or thereabouts, this Farel attached Calvin to Geneva by point- 
ing out to him that it might become the stronghold of a refor- 
mation more thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Cauvin 
looked on Lutheranism as an incomplete achievement, inef- 
fectual, and with no hold on France. Geneva, lying between 
France and Italy, speaking the French tongue, was admirably 
placed for communicating with Germany, Italy, and France. 
Calvin adopted Geneva as the seat of his spiritual fortunes, 
and made it the citadel of his dogmas. At Farel’s request, 
the town council of Geneva authorized Calvin to lecture on 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 203 


theology in the month of September, 1538. Calvin left 
preaching to Farel, his first disciple, and patiently devoted 
himself to teaching his doctrine. His authority, which in the 
later years of his life was paramount, took long to establish. 
The great leader met with serious difficulties ; he was even 
banished from Geneva for some time in consequence of the 
_ austerity of his doctrines. There was a party of very good 
folk who clung to their old luxury and the customs of their 
fathers. But, as is always the case, these worthy people dreaded 
ridicule ; they would not admit what was the real object of 
their struggles, and the battle was fought over details apart 
from the real question. 

Calvin insisted on leavened bread being used for the sacra- 
ment, and on there being no holy days but Sunday. These 
innovations were disapproved of at Berne and at Lausanne. 
The Genevese were required to conform to the ritual of Swit- 
zerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political enemies 
made a pretext of this refractoriness to exile them from Geneva, 
whence they were banished forsome years. At a later period 
Calvin came back in triumph, invited by his flock. 

Such persecution is always a consecration of moral power 
when the prophet can wait. And this return was the era of 
this Mahomet. Executions began, and Calvin organized his 
religious terror. As soon as this commanding spirit reap- 
peared, he was admitted to the citizenship of Geneva; but, 
after fourteen years’ residence there, he was not yet on the 
Council. At the time when Catherine was dispatching a 
minister to treat with him, this king in the realm of thought 
had no title but that of pastor of the church of Geneva. In- 
deed, Calvin never had more than a hundred and fifty francs 
a year in money, fifteen hundredweight of grain, and two casks 
of wine for his whole remuneration. His brother, a tailor, 
kept a shop a few paces away from the Place Saint-Pierre, in 
a street where one of Calvin’s printing-places may still be 
seen. 


204 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Such disinterestedness, which in Voltaire and Bacon was 
lacking, but which is conspicuous in the life of Rabelais, of 
Campanella, of Luther, of Vico, of Descartes, of Malebranche, 
of Spinoza, of Loyola, of Kant, and of Jean-Jacques Rous- 
seau, surely forms a noble setting for these sublime and ardent 
souls. 

Robespierre’s life, so like that of Calvin, can alone, perhaps, 
enable our contemporaries to understand Calvin’s. He, 
founding his power on a similar basis, was as cruel and as 
tyrannical as the Arras lawyer. It is strange, too, that Picardy 
—Arras and Noyon—should have given to the world these 
two great instruments of reform. ‘Those who examine into 
the motives of the executions ordered by Calvin will find, on 
a different scale, no doubt, all of 1793 at Geneva. Calvin had 
Jacques Gruet beheaded ‘‘ for having written impious letters 
and worldly verse, and labored to overthrow church ordi- 
nances.’’ Just consider this sentence, and ask yourself if the 
worst despotism can show in its annals a more absurdly pre- 
posterous indictment. 

Valentin Gentilis, condemned to death for involuntary 
heresy, escaped the scaffold only by making more humiliating 
amends than ever were inflicted by the Catholic church. 
Seven years before the conference presently to be held in 
Calvin’s house, on the Queen-mother’s proposals, Michel 
Servet (or Servetus), a Frenchman, passing through Geneva, 
was put in prison, tried, condemned on Calvin’s testimony, 
and burnt alive for having attacked the mystery of the 
trinity in a work which had not been either composed or 
printed at Geneva. Compare with this the eloquent defense 
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose book, attacking the Catholic 
religion, written in France and published in Holland, was 
_indeed burnt by the hand of the executioner ; but the writer, 
a foreigner, was only banished from the kingdom, where he 
had been trying to strike at the fundamental truths of religion 

Note.—Up to 1561 the Lutherans and Calvinists were one. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 205 


and government ; and compare the conduct of the Parlement 
with that of the Genevese tyrant. 

Bolsée, again, was brought to judgment for having other 
ideas than Calvin on the subject of predestination. Weigh 
all this, and say whether Fouquier-Tinville did anything 
worse. Calvin’s fierce religious intolerance was, morally 
speaking, more intense, more implacable, than the fierce 
political intolerance of Robespierre. On a wider stage than 
was offered by Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood 
than the terrible apostle of political equality, as compared 
with Catholic equality. 

Three centuries earlier a monk, also a son of Picardy, had 
led the whole of Western Europe to invade the East. Peter 
the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, sons of the same soil, 
at intervals of three centuries, were, in a political sense, the 
levers of Archimedes. Each in turn was an embodied idea 
finding its fulcrum in the interests of man. 

Calvin is, beyond doubt, the—almost unrecognized—maker 
of that dismal town of Geneva, where, only ten years since, 
aman, pointing out a carriage gate—the first in the town, for 
till then there had only been house-doors in Geneva—said, 
‘¢ Through that gate luxury drove into Geneva.’’ Calvin, by 
the severity of his sentences and the austerity of his doctrine, 
introduced the hypocritical feeling that has been well called 
Puritanism [the nearest English equivalent perhaps to the 
French word mémerie]. Good conduct, according to the 
momiers or puritans, lay in renouncing the arts and the graces 
of life, in eating well but without luxury, and in silently 
amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin 
enjoyed his power—in fancy. 

Calvin clothed the citizens in the same gloomy livery as he 
threw over life in general. He formed in the Consistory a 
perfect Calvinist inquisition, exactly like the revolutionary 
tribunal instituted by Robespierre. The Consistory handed 
over the victims to be condemned by the Council, which 


206 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, 


Calvin ruled through the Consistory just as Robespierre ruled 
the Convention through the Jacobin Club. Thus an eminent 
magistrate of Geneva was sentenced to two months’ impris- 
onment, to lose his office, and to be prohibited from ever 
filling any other, because he led a dissolute life and had made 
friends among Calvin’s foes. In this way Calvin was actually 
a legislator ; it was he who created the austere manners, sober, 
respectable, hideously dull, but quite irreproachable, which 
have remained unchanged in Geneva to this day; they pre- 
vailed there indeed before the English habits were formed that 
are universally known as Puritanism, under the influence of 
the Cameronians, the followers of Caméron, a Frenchman 
who trod in Calvin’s steps. These manners have been 
admirably described by Walter Scott. 

The poverty of this man, an absolute sovereign, who treated 
as a power with other powers, asking for their treasure, de- 
manding armies, and filling his hands with their money for 
the poor, proves that the Idea, regarded as the sole means of 
dominion, begets political misers, men whose only enjoyment 
is intellectual, and who, like the jesuits, love power for its 
own sake. Pitt, Luther, Calvin, and Robespierre, all these 
HTarpagons in greed of dominion, died penniless. History 
has preserved the inventory made in Calvin’s room after his 
death, and everything, including his books, was valued at 
fifty crowns. Luther’s possessions amounted to as much; 
indeed, his widow, the famons Catherine de Bora, was obliged 
to petition for a pension of fifty crowns bestowed on her by a 
German Elector. 

Potemkim, Mazarin, and Richelieu, men of thought and 
action, who all three founded or prepared the foundations of 
empires, each left three hundred millions of francs; but these 
men had a heart, they loved women and the arts, they built and 
conquered ; while, with the exception of Luther, whose wife 
was the Helen of this Iliad, none of the others could accuse 
himself of ever having felt his heart throb for a woman. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 207 


This brief history was needed to explain Calvin’s position 
at Geneva. 

One day early in February, 1561, on one of the mild even- 
ings which occur at that time of year on the shores of Lake 
Leman, two men on horseback arrived at Pré-l’Evéque, so- 
called from the ancient residence of the Bishop of Geneva, 
driven out thirty years before. These two men, acquainted, 
no doubt, with the laws of Geneva as to the closing of the 
gates, very necessary then, and absurd enough in these days, 
rode toward the Porte de Rives ; but they suddenly drew rein 
at the sight of a man of fifty, walking with the help of a 
woman-servant’s arm, and evidently returning to the town. 
This personage, rather stout in figure, walked slowly and with 
difficulty, dragging one foot before the other with evident 
pain, and wearing broad, laced shoes of black velvet. 

‘*It is he,’’ said Chaudieu’s companion, who dismounted, 
gave his bridle to the preacher, and went forward open-armed 
- to meet the master. 

The man on foot, who was in fact Jean Calvin, drew back 
to avoid the embrace, and cast the severest glance at his dis- 
ciple. At the age of fifty Calvin looked like a man of 
seventy. Thick-set and fat, he seemed all the shorter because 
frightful pain from the stone obliged him to walk much bent. 
These sufferings were complicated with attacks of the worst 
form of gout. Anybody might have quaked at the aspect of 
that face, almost as broad as it was long, and bearing no more 
signs of good-nature, in spite of its roundness, than that of 
the dreadful King Henry VIII., whom Calvin, in fact, resem- 
bled. His sufferings, which never gave him a reprieve, were 
visible in two deep furrows on each side of his nose, follow- 
ing the line of his mustache, and ending, like it, in a full gray 
beard. 

This face, though red and inflamed like a drunkard’s, 
showed patches where his complexion was yellow; still, and 
in spite of the velvet cap that covered his massive, broad 


208 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


head, it was possible to admire a large and nobly formed fore- 
head, and beneath it two sparkling brown eyes, which in 
moments of wrath could flash fire. Whether by reason of his 
bulk, or because his neck was too thick and short, or, as a 
consequence of late hours and incessant work, Calvin’s head 
seemed sunk between his broad shoulders, which compelled 
him to wear a quite shallow, pleated ruff, on which his face 
rested like John the Baptist’s in the charger. Between his 
mustache and his beard there peeped, like a rose, a sweet and 
eloquent mouth, small, and fresh, and perfectly formed. This 
face was divided by a square nose remarkable for its long 
aquiline outline, resulting in high-lights at the tip, significantly 
in harmony with the prodigious power expressed in this mag- 
nificent head. 

Though it was difficult to detect in these features any trace 
of the constant headaches which tormented Calvin in the in- 
tervals of a slow fever that was consuming him, pain, con- 
stantly defied by study and a strong will, gave this apparently 
florid face a terrible tinge, attributable, no doubt, to the hue 
of the layer of fat due to the sedentary habits of a hard 
worker. It bore the marks of the perpetual struggle of a 
sickly temperament against one of the strongest wills known 
in the history of mankind. Even the lips, though beautiful, 
expressed cruelty. A chaste life, indispensable to vast pro- 
jects, and compulsory in such conditions of sickly health, had 
set its stamp on the face. There was regret in the serenity of 
that mighty brow, and suffering in the gaze of the eyes, whose 
calmness was a terror. 

Calvin’s dress gave effect to his head, for he wore the 
famous black cloth gown, belted with a cloth band and brass 
buckle, which was adopted as the costume of Calvinist 
preachers, and which, having nothing to attract the eye, 
directed all the spectator’s attention to the face. 

‘‘T am in too great pain to embrace you, Théodore,”’ said 
Calvin to the elegant horseman. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDICI. 209 


Théodore de Béze, at that time two-and-forty, and, by 
Calvin’s desire, a free citizen of Geneva for two years past, 
was the most striking contrast to the terrible minister to whom 
he had given his allegiance. Calvin, like all men of the 
middle-class who have risen to moral supremacy, like all in- 
ventors of a social system, was consumed with jealousy. He 
abhorred his disciples, would suffer no equal, and could not 
endure the slightest contradiction. However, between him 
and Théodore de Béze the difference was so great ; this elegant 
gentleman, gifted with a charming appearance, polished, 
courteous, and accustomed to Court life, was, in his eyes, so 
unlike all his fierce Janissaries, that for him he set aside his 
usual impulses. He never loved him, for this crabbed law- 
giver knew absolutely nothing of friendship; but having no 
fear of finding his successor in him, he liked to play with 
Théodore, as Richelieu at a later time played with his cat. 
He found him pliant and amusing. When he saw that de Béze 
succeeded to perfection in every mission, he took delight in 
the polished tool of which he believed himself to be the soul 
and guide; so true is it that even those men who seem most 
surly cannot live without some semblance of affection. 

Théodore was Calvin’s spoilt child. The great Reformer 
never scolded him, overlooked his irregularities, his love 
affairs, his handsome dress, and his choice language. Pos- 
sibly Calvin was well content to show that the Reformation 
could hold its own even among Court circles. Théodore de 
Béze wanted to introduce a taste for art, letters, and poetry 
into Geneva, and Calvin would listen to his schemes without 
knitting his grizzled brows. Thus the contrast of character 
and person was as complete as the contrast of mind in these 
two celebrated men. 

Calvin accepted Chaudieu’s very humble bow, and replied 
by slightly bending his head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles 
of both horses over his right arm and followed the two great 
Reformers, keeping to the right of Théodore de Béze, who 

14 ‘ 


210 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


was walking on Calvin’s right. Calvin’s housekeeper ran 
forward to prevent the gate being shut, by telling the captain 
of the Guard that the pastor had just had a severe attack of ~ 
pain. 

Théodore de Béze was a native of the Commune of Vézelay, 
the first to demand for itself corporate government, of which 
the curious tale has been told by one of the Thierrys. Thus 
the spirit of citizenship and resistance which was endemic to 
Vézelay no doubt contributed an item to the great rising of 
the Reformers in the person of this man, who is certainly a 
most singular figure in the history of heresy. 

‘*So you still suffer great pain?’’ said Théodore to Calvin. 

‘¢ The sufferings of the damned, a Catholic would say,’’ re- 
plied the Retormer, with the bitterness that colored his least 
remarks. ‘Ah! I am going fast, my son, and what will be- 
come of you when I am gone ?’’ 

‘“‘We will fight by the light of your writings,’ 
Chaudieu. 

Calvin smiled; his purple face assumed a more gracious 
expression, and he looked kindly on Chaudieu. 

‘‘Well, have you brought me any news!’”’ he asked. 
‘‘ Have they killed a great many of us?’’ he added with a 
smile, and a sort of mocking glee sparkled in his brown eyes. 

‘*No,’’ said Chaudieu ; ‘‘ peace is the order of the day.’’ 

“¢So much the worse, so much the worse!’’ cried Calvin. 
‘‘ Every form of peace would be a misfortune if it were not 
always, in fact, a snare. Our strength lies in persecution. 
Where should we be if the church took up the Reformation ?’’ 

‘‘Indeed,’’ said Théodore, ‘‘that is what the Queen- 
mother seems inclined to do.’’ 

‘¢ She is quite capable of it,’’ said Calvin. ‘‘I am studying 
that woman.”’ 

‘¢ From hence ?”’ cried Chaudieu. 

** Does distance exist for the spirit ?’’ said Calvin severely, 
regarding the interruption as irreverent. ‘‘ Catherine longs 


said 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 211 


for power, and women who aim at that lose all sense of honor 
and faith. What is in the wind?’”’ 

‘‘ Well, she suggests a sort of Council,’’ said Théodore de 
Béze. 

‘‘Near Paris?’’ asked Calvin roughly. 

os Vee 2t 

‘* Ah! that is well! ’’ said Calvin. 

‘* And we are to try to come to an understanding, and draw 
up a public act to consolidate the two churches.”’ 

‘“‘Ah! if only she had courage enough to separate the 
French Church from the Church of Rome, and to create a 
patriarch in France, as in the Greek Church!’’* cried the 
Reformer, whose eyes glistened at this idea, which would 
place him on a throne. ‘But, my son, can a Pope’s niece 
be truthful? She only wants to gain time.”’ 

‘‘And do not we need time to recover from our check at 
Amboise, and to organize some formidable resistance in vari- 
ous parts of the kingdom ?”’ 

“‘She has sent away the Queen of Scotland,’’ said Chau- 
dieu. 

“That is one less, then,’’ said Calvin, as they passed 
through the Porte de Rives. ‘Elizabeth of England will 
keep her busy. Two neighboring queens will soon be fight- 
ing; one is handsome, and the other ugly enough—a first 
cause of irritation; and then there is the question of legiti- 
macy: vad 

He rubbed his hands, and his glee had such a ferocious taint 
that de Béze shuddered, for he too saw the pool of blood at 
which his master was gazing. 

‘¢The Guises have provoked the House of Bourbon,”’ said 
de Béze after a pause; ‘‘ they broke the stick between them 
at Orleans.’’ 

‘* Ay,’’ said Calvin, ‘‘and you, my son, did not believe 
me when, as you last started for Nérac, I told you that we 





* He is an absolute ruler; his title, Ecumenical. 


212 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDIC. 


should end by stirring up war to the death between the two 
branches of the royal family of France. 

*¢So at last I have a court, a king, a dynasty on my side. 
My doctrine has had its effect on the masses. The citizen 
class understand me; henceforth they will call those who 
go to mass idolaters, those who paint the walls of their place 
of worship, and put up pictures and statues there. Oh, 
the populace find it far easier to demolish cathedrals and 
palaces than to discuss justification by faith or the real pres- 
ence! Luther was a wrangler, I am an army! He was a 
reasoner, 1 amasystem! He, my child, was but a tormentor, 
Iam a Tarquin! 

‘*'Yes, they of the truth will destroy churches, will tear 
down pictures, will make millstones of the statues to grind 
the bread of the people. There are bodies in great States, I 
will have only individuals; bodies are too resistant, and see 
clearly when individuals are blind. 

‘‘ Now, we must combine this agitating doctrine with polit- 
ical interests, to consolidate it and to keep up the material of 
my armies. I have satisfied the logic of thrifty minds and 
thinking brains by this bare, undecorated worship which lifts 
religion into the sphere of the ideal. I have made the mob 
understand the advantages of the suppression of ceremonial. 

‘‘ Now, it is your part, Théodore, to enlist people’s inter- 
ests. Do not overstep that line. In the way of doctrine 
everything has been done, everything has been said ; add not 
one jot! Why does Caméron, that little pastor in Gascony, 
meddle with writing ?”’ 

Calvin, Théodore de Béze, and Chaudieu went along the 
streets of the upper town and through the crowd, without 
any attention being paid to the men who were unchaining 
the mob in cities and ravaging France. After this terrifying 
-harangue, they walked on in silence, till they reached the 
little square of Saint-Pierre, and made their way toward the 
minister’s dwelling. Calvin’s lodging consisted of three 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 213 


rooms on the third floor of this house, which is hardly known, 
and of which no one ever tells you in Geneva—where, in- 
deed, there is no statue to Calvin. The rooms were floored 
and wainscoted with pine, and on one side there were a 
kitchen and a servant’s room. The entrance, as is commonly 
the case in Genevese houses, was through the kitchen, which 
opened into a small room with two windows, parlor, dining, 
and drawing-room in one. Next to this was the study where, 
for fourteen years, Calvin’s mind had carried on the battle 
with pain, and beyond was his bedroom. Four oak chairs 
with tapestry seats, placed around a long table, formed all the 
furniture of the sitting-room. A white earthenware stove in 
one corner of the room gave out a pleasant warmth ; paneling 
of unvarnished pine covered the walls, and there was no other 
decoration. The bareness of the place was quite in keeping 
with the frugal and simple life led by the Reformer. 

‘*Well,”’ said de Béze, as he went in, taking advantage of 
a few minutes when Chaudieu had left them to put up the 
horses at a neighboring inn, ‘‘what am I to do? Will you 
agree to this meeting ?”’ 

‘¢ Certainly,’’ said Calvin. ‘‘ You, my son, will bear the 
brunt of the struggle. Be decisive, absolute. Nobody—neither 
the Queen, nor the Guises, nor I—wants pacification as a re- 
sult ; it would not suit our purpose. I have much confidence 
in Duplessis-Mornay. Give him the leading part. We are 
alone ”’ said he, with a suspicious glance into the kitchen, 
of which the door was open, showing two shirts and some 
collars hung to dry onaline. ‘‘Go and shut all the doors, 
Well,’’ he went on, when Théodore had done his bidding, 
‘‘we must compel the King of Navarre to join the Guises and 
the Connétable de Montmorency, by advising him to desert 
Queen Catherine de’ Medici. Let us take full advantage of 
his weakness ; he is but a poor creature. If he prove a turn- 
coat to the Italian woman, she, finding herself bereft of his 
support, must inevitably join the Prince de Condé and 





214 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Coligny. Such a manceuvre may possibly compromise her so 
effectually that she must remain on our side 

Théodore de Béze raised the hem of Calvin’s gown and 
kissed it. 

‘¢ Oh, master,’’ said he, ‘‘ you are indeed great ! ”’ 

‘¢ Unfortunately, I am dying, my dear Théodore. If I 
should die before seeing you again,’’ he went on, whispering 
in the ear of his Minister for Foreign Affairs, ‘‘ remember to 
strike a great blow by the hand of one of our martyrs.’’ 

«¢ Another Minard to be killed ?”’ 

‘¢ Higher than a lawyer.’’ 

“A king ?*’ 

‘¢ Higher still. The man who wants to be king.” 

‘¢The Duc de Guise! ’’ cried Théodore, with a gesture of 
dismay. 

‘‘Well,’’ cried Calvin, fancying that he discerned refusal, 
or at least an instinct of resistance, and failing to notice the 
entrance of Chaudieu, ‘‘ have we not a right to strike as we 
are struck? Yes, and in darkness and silence! May we 
not return wound for wound, and death for death? Do the 
Catholics hesitate to lay snares for us and kill us? I trust to 
you! Burn their churches. Goon, my sons! If you have 
any devoted youths 

**T have,’’ Chaudieu put in. 

‘¢Use them as weapons of war. To triumph, we may use 
every means. The Balafré, that terrible man of war, is, like 
me, more than a man ; he is a dynasty, as I am a system; he 
is capable of annihilating us! Death to the Duc de Guise !”’ 
‘ JT should prefer a peaceful victory, brought about by time 
and reason,’’ said de Béze. 

““ By time!’’ cried Calvin, flinging over his chair. ‘‘ By 
reason? Are youmad? Conquer byreason? Do you know 
nothing of men, you who live among them—idiot? What is 
so fatal to my teaching, thrice-dyed simpleton, is that it is 
based on reason. By the thunders of Saint Paul, by the sword 








ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 215 


of the mighty! Pumpkin as you are, Théodore, cannot you 
see the power that the catastrophe at Amboise has given to 
my reforms? Ideas can never grow till they are watered with 
blood. The murder of the Duc de Guise would give rise to a 

\ fearful persecution, and I hope for it with all my might! To 
us reverses are more favorable than success. The Reformation 
can be beaten and endure, do you hear, oaf? Whereas Cathol- 
icism is overthrown if we win a single battle. 

‘‘ What are these lieutenants of mine? Wet rags and not 
men! Guts on two legs! Christened baboons! O God, 
wilt Thou not grant me another ten years to live? If I die 
too soon, the cause of religion is lost in the hands of such 
rascals ! 

‘You are as helpless as Antoine de Navarre! Begone! 
leave me! I must have a better messenger! You are an ass, 
a popinjay, a poet! Go, write your Catullics, your Tibullics, 
your acrostics! Hoo!”’ 

The pain he suffered was entirely swamped by the fires of 
his wrath. Gout vanished before this fearful excitement. 
Calvin’s face was blotched with purple, like the sky before a 
storm. His broad forehead shone. His eyes flashed fire. 
He was not like the same man. He let himself give way to 
this sort of epileptic frenzy, almost madness, which was 
habitual with him; but, then, struck by the silence of his two 
listeners, and observing Chaudieu, who said to de Béze, 
‘¢The burning bush of Horeb!’’ the minister sat down, was 
dumb, and covered his face with his hands, with their thick- 
ened joints, and his fingers quivered in spite of their strength. 

A few minutes later, while still trembling from the last 
shocks of this tempest—the result of his austere life—he said 
in a broken voice— 

‘« My vices, which are many, are less hard to subdue than 
my impatience! Ah! wild beast, shall I never so al you?’”’ 
he exclaimed, striking his breast. 

‘‘ My beloved master,’’ said de Béze in a caressing tone, 


216 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


taking his hands and kissing them, ‘‘ Jove thunders, but he 
can smile.”’ 

Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened expression. 

‘*Do not misunderstand me, my friends,’’ he said in a 
milder tone. 

‘*T understand that the shepherds of nations have terrible 
burdens to bear,’’ replied Théodore. ‘* You have a world on 
your shoulders.”’ 

«*T,’’ said Chaudieu, who had become thoughtful under the 
master’s abuse, ‘‘ have three martyrs on whom we can depend. 
Stewart, who killed the president, is free oo 

*¢ That will not do,’’ said Calvin mildly, and smiling, as a 
great man can smile when fair weather follows a storm on his 
face, as if he were ashamed of the tempest. ‘‘I know men. 
He who kills one president will not kill a second.”’ 

“«Ts it absolutely necessary ?’’ said de Béze. 

‘*What, again?’’ cried Calvin, his nostrils expanding. 
‘¢ There, go; you will put me in a rage again. You have my 
decision. You, Chaudieu, walk in your own path, and keep 
the Paris flock together. God be with you. Dinah! Light 
my friends out.”’ 

‘*Will you not allow me to embrace you?’’ said de Béze 
with emotion. ‘‘ Who can tell what the morrow even will 
bring forth? We may be imprisoned in spite of safe-con- 
ducts-——’’ 

‘‘And yet you want to spare them ?’’ said Calvin, embracing 
de Béze. 

He took Chaudieu’s hand, saying— 

‘* Mind you, not Huguenots, not Reformers : be Calvinists. 
Speak only of Calvinism. Alas! this isnot ambition, for I am 
a dying man! Only, everything of Luther’s must be de- 
stroyed, to the very names of Lutheran and Lutheranism.”’ 

*‘Indeed, divine man, you deserve such honor!’’ cried 
Chaudieu. 

‘‘Uphold uniformity of creed. Do not allow amy further 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 217 


examination or reconstruction. If new sects arise from 
among us, we are lost.’’ 

To anticipate events and dismiss Théodore de Béze, who 
returned to Paris with Chaudieu, it may be said that Poltrot, 
who, eighteen months later, fired a pistol at the Duc de Guise, 
confessed, under torture, that he had been urged to the crime 
by Théodore de Béze; however, he retracted this statement 
at a later stage. Indeed, Bossuet, who weighed all the his- 
torical evidence, did not think that the idea of this attempt 
was due to Théodore de Béze. Since Bossuet, however, a 
dissertation of an apparently trivial character, @ propos to a 
famous ballad, enabled a compiler of the eighteenth century to 
prove that the song sung throughout France by the Huguenots 
on the death of the Duc de Guise was written by Théodore 
de Béze ; and, moreover, that the well-known ballad or lament 
on Malbrouck—the Duke of Marlborough—is plagiarized 
from Théodore de Béze.* 

On the day when Théodore de Béze and Chaudieu reached 
Paris, the Court had returned thither from Reims, where 
Charles IX. had been crowned. This ceremony, to which 
Catherine gave unusual splendor, making it the occasion of 
great festivities, enabled her to gather round her the leaders 
of every faction. 

After studying the various parties and interests, she saw a 
choice of two alternatives—either to enlist them on the side 
of the throne or to set them against each other. The Con- 
nétable de Montmorency, above all else a Catholic, whose 
nephew, the Prince de Condé, was the leader of the Refor- 
mation, and whose children also had a leaning to that creed, 
blamed the Queen-mother for allying herself with that party. 
The Guises, on their side, worked hard to gain over Antoine 
de Bourbon, a Prince of no strength of character, and attach 
him to their faction, and his wife, the Queen of Navarre, 
informed by de Béze, allowed this to be done. These diffi- 


* See note at the end of this volume. 


218 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


culties checked Catherine, whose newly acquired authority 
needed a brief period of tranquillity ; she impatiently awaited 
Calvin’s reply by de Béze and Chaudieu, sent to the great 
Reformer on behalf of the Prince de Condé, the King of 
Navarre, Coligny, d’Andelot, and Cardinal de Chatillon. 

Meanwhile, the Queen-mother was true to her promises to 
the Prince de Condé. The chancellor quashed the trial, in 
which Christophe was involved, by referring the case to the 
Paris Parlement, and they annulled the sentence pronounced 
by the Commission, declaring it incompetent to try a Prince 
of the Blood. The Parlement reopened the trial by the 
desire of the Guises and the Queen-mother. La Sagne’s 
papers had been placed in Catherine’s hands, and she had 
burnt them. This sacrifice was the first pledge given, quite 
vainly, by the Guises to the Queen-mother. The Parlement, 
not having this decisive evidence, reinstated the Prince in all 
his rights, possessions, and honors. 

Christophe, thus released when Orleans was in all its excite- 
ment over the King’s accession, was excluded from the case, 
and, as a compensation for his sufferings, was passed as a 
pleader by Monsieur de Thou. : 

The Triumvirate—the coalition of interests which were 
imperiled by Catherine’s first steps in authority—was hatch- 
ing under her very eyes. Just as in chemistry hostile elements 
fly asunder at the shock that disturbs their compulsory union, 
so in politics the alliance of antagonistic interests can never 
last long. Catherine fully understood that, sooner or later, 
she must fall back on the connétable and the Guises to fight 
the Huguenots. The convocation, which served to flatter the 
vanity of the orators on each side, and, as an excuse for 
another imposing ceremony after that of the coronation, to 
clear the blood-stained field for the religious war that had, 
indeed, already begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Guises 
as it was in Catherine’s. The Catholics could not fail to be 
the losers; for the Huguenots, under the pretense of discus- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 219 


sion, would be able to proclaim their doctrine in the face of 
all France, under the protection of the King and his mother. 
The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine into the 
hope of conquering the heretics by the eloquence of the 
princes of the church, induced his brother to consent. To the 
Queen-mother six months of peace meant much. 

A trivial incident was near wrecking the power which Cath- 
erine was so laboriously building up. This is the scene as 
recorded by history; it occurred on the very day when the 
envoys from Geneva arrived at the Hétel de Coligny in 
the Rue Béthisy, not far from the Louvre. At the corona- 
tion, Charles IX., who was much attached to his instructor, 
Amyot, made him high almoner of France. This affection 
was fully shared by the Duc d’ oo (Henry III.), who also 
was Amyot’s pupil. 

Catherine heard this from the two Gondis on the way home 
from Reims to Paris. She had relied on this Crown appoint- 
ment to gain her a supporter in the church, and a person of 
importance to set against the Cardinal de Lorraine; she had 
intended to bestow it on Cardinal de Tournon, so as to find 
in him, as in |’H6pital, a second crutchH—to use her own 
words. On arriving at the Louvre, she sent for the preceptor. 
Her rage at seeing the catastrophe that threatened her policy 
from the ambition of this self-made man—the son of a shoe- 
maker—was such that she addressed him in this strange speech 
recorded by certain chroniclers— 

‘¢What! I can make the Guises cringe, the Colignys, the 

Montmorencys, the House of Navarre, the Prince de Condé, 
and I am to be balked by a priestling like you, who was not 
content to be Bishop of Auxerre!”’ 
_ Amyot excused himself. He had, in fact, asked for noth- 
ing; the King had appointed him of his own free will to this 
office, of which he, a humble teacher, regarded himself as 
unworthy. 

‘¢ Rest assured, master,’’ for it was by this name that the 


220 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICY. 


Kings Charles IX. and Henri III. addressed this great writer, 
‘that you will not be left standing for twenty-four hours un- 
less you induce your pupil to change his mind.”’ 

Between death promised him in such an uncompromising 
way, and the abdication of the highest ecclesiastical office in 
the kingdom, the shoemaker’s son, who had grown covetous, 
and hoped perhaps for a cardinal’s hat, determined to tem- 
porize. He hid in the abbey of Saint-Germain en Laye, 

At his first dinner, Charles IX., not seeing Amyot, asked 
for him. Some Guisard, no doubt, told the King what had 
passed between Amyot and the Queen-mother. 

“‘What!’’ cried he, ‘‘ has he been made away with because 
I created him high almoner ?”’ 

He went off to his mother in the violent state of a child 
when one of his fancies is contravened. 

‘*Madame,”’ said he, as he entered her room, ‘‘did I not 
comply with your wishes and sign the letter you asked of me 
for the Parlement, by virtue of which you govern my king- 
dom? Did you not promise me, when you laid it before me, 
that my will should be yours ? and now the only favor I have 
cared to bestow excites your jealousy. The chancellor talks 
of making me of age at fourteen, three years from hence, and 
you treat me asa child! By God, but I mean to be King, 
and as much a King as my father and grandfather were kings !”’ 

The tone and vehemence with which he spoke these words 
were a revelation to Catherine of her son’s true character ; it 
was like a blow from a bludgeon on her heart. 

‘‘And he speaks thus to me,’’ thought she, ‘‘ to me, who 
made him King. Mbonsieur,’’ she said, ‘‘ the business of 
being King in such times as these is a difficult one, and you 
do not yet know the master minds you have to deal with. 
You will never have any true and trustworthy friend but your 
mother, or other adherents than those whom she long since 
attached to her, and but for whom you would perhaps not be 
alive at this day. The Guises are averse both to your position 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 221 


and your person, I would have you know. If they could sew 
me up in a sack and throw me into the river,’”’ said she, 
pointing to the Seine, ‘‘ they would do it to-night. Those 
Lorrains feel that I am a lioness defending her cubs, and that 
stays the bold hands they stretch out to clutch the crown. 
To whom, to what is your preceptor attached? where are his 
allies? what is his authority ? what services can he do you? 
what weight will his words have? Instead of gaining a but- 
tress to uphold your power, you have undermined it. 

‘The Cardinal de Lorraine threatens you; he plays the 
King, and keeps his hat on his head in the presence of the 
first Prince of the Blood; was it not necessary to counter- 
balance him with another cardinal, invested with authority 
equal to his own? Is Amyot, a shoemaker who might tie the 
bows of his shoes, the man to defy him to his face? Well, 
well, you are fond of Amyot. You have appointed him! 
Your first decision shall be respected, my lord! But before 
deciding any further, have the kindness to consult me. 
Listen to reasons of State, and your boyish good-sense will 
perhaps agree with my old woman’s experience before decid- 
ing, when you know all the difficulties.”’ 

‘*You must bring back my master!’’ said the King, not 
listening very carefully to the Queen, on finding her speech 
full of reproofs. 

‘¢Yes, you shall have him,’’ replied she. ‘But not he, 
nor even that rough Cypierre, can teach you to reign.”’ 

‘It is you, my dear mother,” he exclaimed, mollified by 
his triumph, and throwing off the threatening and sly expres- 
sion which nature had stamped on his physiognomy. 

Catherine sent Gondi to find the high almoner. When the 
Florentine had discovered Amyot’s retreat, and the bishop 
heard that the courtier came from the Queen, he was seized 
with terror, and would not come out of the abbey. In this 
extremity Catherine was obliged to write him himself, and in 
such terms that he came back and obtained the promise of her 


222 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


support, but only on condition of his obeying her blindly in 
all that concerned the King. 

This little domestic tempest being lulled, Catherine came 
back to the Louvre. It was more than a year since she had 
left it, and she now held council with her nearest friends as to 
how she was to deal with the young King, whom Cypierre 
had complimented on his firmness. 

‘¢ What is to be done? ”’ said she to the two Gondis, Rug- 
gieri, Birague, and Chiverni, now tutor and chancellor to the 
Duc d’ Anjou. 

‘First of all,’’ said Birague, ‘‘ get rid of Cypierre; he 
is not a courtier, he will never fall in with your views, and 
will think he is doing his duty by opposing you.”’ 

‘¢ Whom can I trust? ’’ cried the Queen. 

“¢ One of us,’’ said Birague. 

‘«¢ By my faith,’’ said Gondi, ‘‘I promise to make the King 
as pliant as the King of Navarre.”’ 

‘*You let the late King die to save your other children ; 
well, then, do as the grand Signors of Constantinople do: 
crush this one’s passions and fancies,’’ said Albert de Gondi. 
‘¢ He likes the arts, poetry, hunting, and a little girl he saw 
at Orleans ; all this is quite enough to occupy him.”’ 

‘*Then you would be the King’s tutor?’’ said Catherine, 
to the more capable of the two Gondis. 

‘* Tf you will give me the necessary authority; it might be 
well to make me a marshal of France and a Duke. Cypierre 
is too small a man to continue in that office. Henceforth the 
tutor of a King of France should be a marshal and Duke, or 
something of the kind——’”’ 

‘¢ He is right,’’ said Birague. 

‘Poetry and hunting,’’ said Catherine, in a dreamy voice. 

‘¢ We will hunt and make love!’’ cried Gondi. 

‘* Beside,’’ said Chiverni, ‘‘ you are sure of Amyot, who 
will always be afraid of a drugged cup in case of disobedience, 
and with Gondi you will have the King in leading strings.”’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 223 


‘«- You were resigned to the loss of one son to save the three 
others and the Crown; now you must have the courage to 
keep this one occupied to save the kingdom—to save yourself 
perhaps,’’ said Ruggieri. 

‘* He has just offended me deeply,’’ said Catherine. 

‘*He does not know how much he owes you; and if he 
did, you would not be safe,’’ Birague replied with grave em- 
phasis. 

«It is settled,’’ said the Queen, on whom this reply had a 
startling effect ; ‘‘ you are to be the King’s governor, Gondi. 
The King must make me a return in favor of one of my friends 
for the concession I have made for that cowardly bishop. 
But the fool has lost the cardinal’s hat; so long as I live I 
will hinder the Pope from fitting it to his head! We should 
have been very strong with Cardinal de Tournon to support 
us. What a trio they would have made: he, as high almoner, 
with ]’H6épital and de Thou! As to the citizens of Paris, I 
mean to make my son coax them over, and we will lean on 
them.”’ 

And Gondi was, in fact, made a marshal, created Duc de 
Retz and tutor to the King, within a few days. 

This little council was just over when Cardinal de Tournon 
came to announce to the Queen the messengers from Calvin. 
Admiral Coligny escorted them to secure them respectful 
treatment at the Louvre. The Queen summoned her battalion 
of maids of honor, and went into the great reception-room 
built by her husband, which no longer exists in the Louvre 
of our day. 

At that time the staircase of the Louvre was in the clock- 
tower. Catherine’s rooms were in the older part of the build- 
ing, part of which survives in the Cour du Musée. The pres- 
ent staircase to the galleries was built where the Sa//e des 
ballets (dancing hall) was before it. A dal/et at that time 
meant a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by all the 
Court. 


224 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Revolutionary prejudice led to the most ridiculous mistake 
as to Charles IX. & propos to the Louvre. During the Revolu- 
tion a belief defamatory of this King, whose character has 
been caricatured, made a monster of him. Chénier’s tragedy 
was written under the provocation of a tablet hung up on the 
window of the part of the palace that projects toward the 
quay. On it were these words, ‘‘ From this window Charles 
IX. of execrable memory fired on the citizens of Paris.” It 
may be well to point out to future historians and studious 
persons that the whole of that side of the Louvre, now called 
the Old Louvre—the projecting wing at a right angle to the 
quay, connecting the galleries with the Louvre by what is 
called the Galerie d’Apollon, and the Louvre with the Tuil- 
eries by the picture gallery—was not in existence in the time 
of Charles IX. The principal part of the site of the river- 
front, where lies the garden known as le Jardin de ]’Infante, 
was occupied by the Hétel de Bourbon, which belonged, in 
fact, to the House of Navarre. It would have been physically 
impossible for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. 
on a boat full of Huguenots crossing the Seine, though he 
could see the river from some windows, which are now built 
up, in that part of the palace. 

Even if historians and libraries did not possess maps in 
which the Louvre at the time of Charles IX. is perfectly 
shown, the building bears in itself the refutation of the error. 
The several kings who have contributed to this vast structure 
have never failed to leave their cypher on the work in some 
form of monogram. The venerable buildings, now all dis- 
colored, of that part of the Louvre that goes down to the 
quay bear the initials of Henri II. and of Henri IV.; quite 
different from those of Henri III., who added to his H Cath- 
erine’s double C in a way that looks like D to superficial 
observers. It was Henri IV. who was able to add his own 
palace, the Hétel de Bourbon, with its gardens and domain, 
on to the Louvre. He first thought of uniting Catherine de’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 225 


Medici’s palace to the Louvre by finishing the galleries, of 
which the exquisite sculpture is too little appreciated. 

But if no plan of Paris under Charles IX. were in existence, 
nor the monograms of the two Henrys, the difference in the 
architecture would be enough to give the lie to this calumny. 
The rusticated bosses of the Hétel de la Force, and of this 
portion of the Louvre, are precisely characteristic of the 
transition from the architecture of the Renaissance to the 
architecture of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. 

This archeological digression, in harmony, to be sure, with 
the pictures at the beginning of this narrative, enables us to 
see the aspect of this other part of Paris, of which nothing 
now remains but that portion of the Louvre, where the beau- 
tiful bas-reliefs are perishing day by day. 

When the Court was informed that the Queen was about to 
give audience to Théodore de Béze and Chaudieu, introduced 
by Admiral Coligny, every one who had a right to go into 
the throne-room hastened to be present at this interview. It 
was about six o’clock ; Admiral Coligny had supped, and was 
picking his teeth as he walked upstairs between the two Cal- 
vinists. This playing with a toothpick was a confirmed habit 
with the admiral; he involuntarily picked his teeth in the 
middle of a battle when meditating a retreat. ‘‘ Never trust 
the admiral’s toothpick, the constable’s ‘ No,’ nor Catherine’s 
‘Yes,’’’ was one of the proverbs of the Court at the time. 
And after the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, the mob made 
horrible mockery of the admiral’s body, which hung for three 
days at Montfaucon, by sticking a grotesque toothpick between 
his teeth. .Chroniclers have recorded this hideous jest. And, 
indeed, this trivial detail in the midst of a tremendous catas- 
trophe is just like the Paris mob, which thoroughly deserves 
this grotesque parody of a line of Boileau’s: 


“ Le Frangais, né malin, créa la guillotine.” 


Or: The Frenchman, a born wag, invented the guillotine. 
16 


226 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


In all ages, the Parisians have made fun before, during, and 
after the most terrible revolutions. 

Théodore de Béze was in Court dress, black silk long-hose, 
slashed shoes, full trunks, a doublet of black silk, also slashed, 
and a little, black velvet cloak, over which fell a fine white 
ruff, deeply gauffered. He wore the tuft of beard called a 
virgule (a comma) and a mustache, his sword hung by his 
side, and he carried a cane. All who know the pictures at 
Versailles, or the portraits by Odieuvre, know his round and 
almost jovial face, with bright eyes, and the remarkably high 
and broad forehead, which is characteristic of the poets and 
writers of that time. De Béze had a pleasant face, which 
did him good service. He formed a striking contrast to 
Coligny, whose austere features are known to all, and to the 
bitter and bilious-looking Chaudieu, who wore the preacher’s 
gown and Calvinist bands. 

The state of affairs in the Chamber of Deputies in our own 
day, and that, no doubt, in the Convention too, may enable 
us to understand how at that Court and at that time persons, 
who six months after would be fighting to the death and 
waging heinous warfare, would meanwhile meet, address each 
other with courtesy, and exchange jests. 

When Coligny entered the room, Birague, who would coldly 
advise the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, and the Cardinal de 
Lorraine, who would tell his servant Besme not to miss the ad- 
miral, came forward to meet him, and the Piedmontese said, 
with a smile— 

‘* Well, my dear admiral, so you have undertaken to intro- 
duce these gentlemen from Geneva ?”’ 

‘*And you will count it to me for a crime perhaps,’’ re- 
plied the admiral in jest, ‘‘ while, if you had undertaken it, 
you would have scored it as a merit.’”’ 

‘* Master Calvin, I hear, is very ill,’’ said the Cardinal de 
Lorraine to Théodore de Béze. ‘I hope we shall not be sus- 
pected of having stirred his broth for him!”’ 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 227 


‘¢ Nay, monseigneur, you would lose too much by that,’ 
said Théodore de Béze shrewdly. 

The Duc de Guise, who was examining Chaudieu, stared 
at his brother and Birague, who were both startled by this 
speech. 

‘* By God!’’ exclaimed the cardinal, ‘‘ heretics are of the 
right faith in keen politics! ’’ 

To avoid difficulties, the Queen, who was announced at 
this moment, remained standing. She began by conversing 
with the connétable, who spoke eagerly of the scandal of her 
admitting Calvin’s envoys to her presence. 

‘¢ But, you see, my dear constable, we receive them without 
ceremony.”’ 

‘‘Madame,”’ said the admiral, approaching Catherine, 
‘“these are the two doctors of the new religion who have come 
to an understanding with Calvin, and have taken his instruc- 
tions as to a meeting where the various churches of France 
may compromise their differences.”’ 

‘¢ This is Monsieur Théodore de Béze, my wife’s very great 
favorite,’’ said the King of Navarre, coming forward and 
taking de Béze by the hand. 

‘‘And here is Chaudieu!’’ cried the Prince de Condé. 
‘‘ My friend the Duc de Guise knows the captain,”’ he added, 
looking at le Balafré; ‘‘ perhaps he would like to make ac- 
quaintance with the minister.”’ 

This sally made everybody laugh, even Catherine. 

‘¢ By my troth,’’ said the Duc de Guise, ‘‘I am delighted 
to see a man who can so well choose a follower, and make use 
of him in his degree. One of your men,”’ said he to the 
preacher, ‘‘endured, without dying or confessing anything, 
the extreme of torture; I fancy myself brave, but I do not 
know that I could endure so well!”’ 

“‘Hm!’’ observed Ambroise Paré, ‘‘ you said not a word 
when I pulled the spear out of your face at Calais.’’ 

Catherine, in the middle of the semicircle formed right and 


228 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


left of the maids of honor and Court officials, kept silence. 
- While looking at the two famous Reformers, she was trying 
to penetrate them with her fine, intelligent, black eyes, and 
study them thoroughly. 

‘‘One might be the sheath and the other the blade,’” Al- 
bert de Gondi said in her ear. 

‘‘ Well, gentlemen,’’ said Catherine, who could not help 
smiling, ‘‘ has your master given you liberty to arrange a pub- 
lic conference where you may convert to the Word of God 
those modern fathers of the church who are the glory of our 
realm ?”’ 

‘¢ We have no master but the Lord,’’ said Chaudieu. 

‘¢ Well, you acknowledge some authority in the King of 
France ?’’ said Catherine, smiling, and interrupting the min- 
ister. 

‘And a great deal in the Queen,”’ added de Béze, bowing 
low. 

“You will see,’’ she went on, ‘‘ that the heretics will be my 
most dutiful subjects.”’ 

“Oh, madame,’’ cried Coligny, ‘‘ what a splendid kingdom 
we will make for you! Europe reaps great profit from our 
divisions, It has seen one-half of France set against the other 
for fifty years past.’’ 

‘« Have we come here to hear chants in praise of heretics? ’” 
said the constable roughly. 

‘“No, but to bring them to amendment,’”’ answered the 
Cardinal de Lorraine in a whisper, ‘‘and we hope to achieve 
it by a little gentleness.”’ 

‘‘Do you know what I should have done in the reign of the 
King’s father?’’ said Anne de Montmorency. ‘I should 
have sent for the provost to hang those two rascals high and 
dry on the Louvre gallows.”’ 

‘Well, gentlemen, and who are the learned doctors you 
will bring into the field ?’’ asked the Queen, silencing the con- 
stable with a look. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 229 


‘¢ Duplessis-Mornay and Théodore de Béze are our leaders,”’ 
said Chaudieu. 

‘‘The Court will probably go to the Castle of Saint-Ger- 
main ; and as it would not be seemly that this colloquy should 
take place in the same town, it shall be held in the little town 
of Poissy,’’ replied Catherine. 

‘¢ Shall we be safe there, madame ?’’ asked Chaudieu. 

**Oh!”’ said the Queen, with a sort of simplicity, « you 
will, no doubt, know what precautions to take. Monsieur the 
Admiral will make arrangements to that effect with my cousins 
de Guise and Montmorency.”’ 

‘* Fie on it all!’’ said the constable ; ‘‘I will have no part 
prog | oho 

The Queen took Chaudieu a little way apart. 

‘¢ What do you do to your sectarians to give them such a 
spirit?’’ said she. ‘‘ My furrier’s son was really sublime,”’ 
she added. 

‘* We have faith,’’ said Chaudieu. 

At this moment the room was filled with eager groups, all 
discussing the question of this assembly, which, from the 
Queen’s suggestion, was already spoken of as the ‘* Convoca- 
tion of Poissy.’’ 

Catherine looked at Chaudieu, and felt it safe to say— 

‘¢ Yes, a new faith.”’ 

‘‘Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your connection 
with the Court of Rome, you would see that we are returning 
to the true doctrine of Jesus Christ, who, while sanctifying 
the equality of souls, has given all men on earth equal 
rights.”’ 

‘‘And do you think yourself the equal of Calvin ?’’ said 
Catherine shrewdly. ‘‘ Nay, nay, we are equals only in 
church. What, really? Break all bonds between the people 
and the throne ?’’ cried Catherine. ‘‘ You are not merely here- 
tics ; you rebel against obedience to the King while avoiding 
all obedience to the Pope.”’ 


230 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


She sharply turned away, and returned to Théodore de 
Béze. 

‘TI trust to you, monsieur,’’ she said, ‘‘to carry through 
this conference conscientiously. Take time over it.’’ 

‘¢T fancied,’’ said Chaudieu to the Prince de Condé, the 
King of Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, ‘ that affairs of State 
were taken more seriously.”’ 

‘*Oh, we all know exactly what we mean,”’ said the Prince 
de Condé, with a significant glance at Théodore de Béze. 

The hunchback took leave of his followers to keep an assig- 
nation. This great Prince and party leader was one of the 
most successful gallants of the Court; the two handsomest 
women of the day fought for him with such infatuation that 
the Maréchale de Saint-André, the wife of one of the coming 
Triumvirate, gave him her fine estate of Saint-Valery to win 
him from the Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had 
wanted to bring his head under the axe ; being unable to wean 
the Duc de Nemours from his flirtations with Mademoiselle de 
Rohan, she fell in love, meanwhile, with the leader of the Re- 
formed party. 

‘* How different from Geneva!’’ said Chaudieu to Théo- 
dore de Béze on the little bridge by the Louvre. 

‘They are livelier here, and I cannot imagine why they 
are such traitors,’’ replied de Béze. 

‘¢ Meet a traitor with a traitor-and-a-half,’’ said Chaudieu 
in a whisper. ‘I have saints in Paris that I can rely on, and 
I mean to make a prophet of Calvin. Christophe will rid us 
of the most dangerous of our enemies.”’ 

‘*The Queen-mother, for whom the poor wretch endured 
torture, has already had him passed, by high-handed orders, 
as pleader before the Parlement, and lawyers are more apt to 
be tell-tales than assassins. Remember Avenelles, who sold 
the secret of our first attempt to take up arms.”’ 

‘But I know Christophe,’’ said Chaudieu, with an air of 
conviction, as he and the Calvinist ambassador parted. 


? 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 231 


Some days after the reception of Calvin’s secret envoys by 
Catherine, and toward the end of that year—for the year then 
began at Easter, and the modern calendar was not adopted 
until this very reign—Christophe, still stretched on an arm- 
chair, was sitting on that side of the large sombre room where 
our story began, in such a position as to look out on the river. 
His feet rested on a stool. Mademoiselle Lecamus and Ba- 
bette Lallier had just renewed the application of compresses, 
soaked in a lotion brought by Ambroise, to whose care Cath- 
erine had commended Christophe. When once he was re- 
stored to his family, the lad had become the object of the 
most devoted care. Babette, with her father’s permission, 
came to the house every morning and did not leave until the 
evening. Christophe, a subject of wonder to the apprentices, 
gave rise in the neighborhood to endless tales, which involved 
him in poetic mystery. He had been put to torture, and the 
famous Ambroise Paré was exerting all his skill to save him. 
What, then, had he done to be treated so? On this point 
neither Christophe nor his father breathed a word. Catherine, 
now all-powerful, had an interest in keeping silence, and so 
had the Prince de Condé. The visits of Ambroise Paré, the 
surgeon to the King and to the House of Guise, permitted 
by the Queen-mother and the Princes of Lorraine to attend a 
youth accused of heresy, added to the singularity of this busi- 
ness, which no one could see through. And then the priest 
of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs came several times to see his church- 
warden’s son, and these visits made the causes of Christophe’s 
condition even more inexplicable. 

The old furrier, who had a plan of his own, replied evasively 
when his fellows of the guild, traders, and friends spoke of his 
son— 

‘<T am very happy, neighbor, to have been able to save 
him! You know! it is well not to put your finger between 
the wood and the bark. My son put his hand to the stake 
and took out fire enough to burn my house down! They im- 


232 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


hod 


posed on his youth, and we citizens never get anything but 
scorn and harm by hanging on to the great. This quite de- 
termines me to make a lawyer of my boy; the law courts will 
teach him to weigh his words and deeds. The young Queen, 
who is now in Scotland, had a great deal to do with it; but 
perhaps Christophe was very imprudent too. I went through 
terrible grief. All this will probably lead to my retiring from 
business ; I will never go to Court any more. My son has 
had enough of the Reformation now; it has left him with 
broken arms and legs. But for Ambroise, where should I be?”’ 
Thanks to these speeches, and to his prudence, a report was 
spread in the neighborhood that Christophe no longer fol- 
lowed the creed of Colas. Every one thought it quite natural 
that the old Syndic should wish to see his son a lawyer in the 
Parlement, and thus the priest’s calls seemed quite a matter 
of course. In thinking of the old man’s woes, no one thought 
of his ambition, which would have been deemed monstrous. 
The young lawyer, who had spent ninety days on the bed 
put up for him in the old sitting-room, had only been out of 
it for a week past, and still needed the help of crutches to 
enable him to walk. Babette’s affection and his mother’s 
tenderness had touched Christophe deeply ; still, having him 
in bed, the two women lectured him soundly on the subject 
of religion. Président de Thou came to see his godson, and 
was most paternal. Christophe, as a pleader in the Parle- 
ment, ought to be a Catholic, he would be pledged to it by 
his oath; and the president, who never seemed to doubt the 
young man’s orthodoxy, added these important words— 
**You have been cruelly tested, my boy. I myself know 
nothing of the reasons Messieurs de Guise had for treating 
you thus; but now I exhort you to live quietly henceforth 
and not to interfere in broils, for the favor of the King and 
Queen will not be shown to such as brew storms. You are 
not a great enough man to drive a bargain with the King, 
like the Duke and the cardinal. If you want to be councilor 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 233 


in the Parlement some day, you can only attain that high 
office by serious devotion to the cause of royalty.”’ 

However, neither Monsieur de Thou’s visit, nor Babette’s 
charms, nor the entreaties of Madame Lecamus, his mother, 
had shaken the faith of the Protestant martyr. Christophe 
clung all the more stoutly to his religion ‘in proportion to 
what he had suffered for it. 

‘* My father will never allow me to marry a heretic,’’ said 
Babette in his ear. 

Christophe replied only with tears, which left the pretty 
girl speechless and thoughtful. 

Old Lecamus maintained his dignity as a father and a 
Syndic; watched his son, and said little. The old man, 
having got back his dear Christophe, was almost vexed with 
himself, and repentant of having displayed all his affection 
for his only son; but secretly he admired him. At no time 
in his life had the furrier pulled so many wires to gain his 
ends ; for he could see the ripe harvest of the crop sown with 
so much toil, and wished to gather it all. 

A few days since he had had a long conversation with 
Christophe alone, hoping to discover the secret of his son’s 
tenacity. Christophe, who was not devoid of ambition, be- 
lieved in the Prince de Condé. The Prince’s generous speech 
—which was no more than the stock-in-trade of princes—was 
stamped on his heart. He did not know that Condé had 
wished him at the devil at the moment when he bid him such 
a touching farewell through the bars of his prison at Orleans. 

‘*A Gascon would have understood,’’ the Prince had said 
to himself. 

And in spite of his admiration for the Prince, Christophe 
cherished the deepest respect for Catherine, the great Queen 
who had explained to him in a look that she was compelled 
by necessity to sacrifice him, and then, during his torture, 
had conveyed to him in another glance an unlimited promise 
by an almost imperceptible tear. 


234 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


During the deep calm of the ninety days and nights he had 
spent in recovering, the newly made lawyer thought over the 
events at Blois and at Orleans. He weighed, in spite of him- 
self, it may be said, the influence of these two patrons; he 
hesitated between the Queen and the Prince. He had cer- 
tainly done more for Catherine than for the Reformation ; 
and the young man’s heart and mind, of course, went forth 
to the Queen, less by reason of this difference than because 
she was a woman. In sucha case a man will always found 
his hopes on a woman rather than on a man. 

‘‘T immolated myself for her—what will she not do for 
me P”’ 

This was the question he almost involuntarily asked himself 
as he recalled the tone in which she had said, ‘‘ My poor 
boy!” 

It is difficult to conceive of the pitch of self-consciousness 
reached by a man alone and sick in bed. Everything, even 
the care of which he is the object, tends to make him think 
of himself alone. By exaggerating the Prince de Condé’s 
obligations to him, Christophe looked forward to obtaining 
some post at the Court of Navarre. The lad, a novice still 
in politics, was all the more forgetful of the anxieties which 
absorb party leaders, and of the swift rush of men and events 
which overrule them, because he lived almost in solitary 
imprisonment in that dark parlor. Every party is bound to 
be ungrateful when it is fighting for dear life; and when it 
has won the day, there are so many persons to be rewarded, 
that it is ungrateful still. The rank and file submit to this 
oblivion, but the captains turn against the new master who 
for so long has marched as their equal. 

Christophe, the only person to remember what he had 
suffered, already reckoned himself as one of the chiefs of the 
Reformation by considering himself as one of its martyrs. 
Lecamus, the old wolf of trade, acute and clear-sighted, had 
guessed his son’s secret thoughts ; indeed, all his manoeuvring 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICi. 235 


was based on the very natural hesitancy that possessed the 
lad. 

‘‘Would it not be fine,’’ he had said the day before to 
Babette, ‘‘ to be the wife of a councilor to the Parlement ? you 
would be addressed as madame.’’ 

‘You are crazy, neighbor,’’ said Lallier. ‘‘In the first 
place, where would you find ten thousand crowns a year in 
landed estate, which a councilor must show, and from whom 
could you purchase a connection? The Queen-mother and 
Regent would have to give all her mind to it to get your son 
into the Parlement; and he smells of the stake too strongly 
to be admitted.”’ 

‘* What would you give, now, to see your daughter a coun- 
cilor’s wife ?’”’ 

‘* You want to sound the depth of my purse, you old fox! ”’ 
exclaimed Lallier. 

Councilor to the Parlement! The words distracted Chris- 
tophe’s brain. 

Long after the conference was over, one morning when 
Christophe sat gazing at the river, which reminded him of 
the scene that was the beginning of all this story, of the 
Prince de Condé, la Renaudie, and Chaudieu, of his journey 
to Blois, and of all he hoped for, the Syndic came to sit down 
by his son with ill-disguised glee under an affectation of 
solemnity. 

‘My boy,”’ said he, ‘‘after what took place between you 
and the heads of the riot at Amboise, they owed you so much 
that your future might very well be cared for by the House 
of Navarre.’’ 

‘¢ Yes,’’ replied Christophe. 

‘¢ Well,’’ his father went on, ‘I have definitely applied for 
permission for you to purchase a legal business in Béarn.* 
Our good friend Paré undertook to transmit the letters I wrote 
in your name to the Prince de Condé and Queen Jeanne. 


* Then a province of Navarre-Gascony. 


236 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC, 


Here, read this reply from Monsieur de Pibrac, Vice-Chan 
cellor of Navarre: 


‘*To Master Lecamus, Syndic of the Gutld of Furriers. 


‘His Highness the Prince de Condé bids me express to 
you his regret at being unable to do anything for his fellow- 
prisoner in the Tour de Saint-Aignan, whom he remembers 
well, and to whom, for the present, he offers the place of 
man-at-arms in his own company, where he will have the 
opportunity of making his way as a man of good heart— 
which he is. 

‘¢ The Queen of Navarre hopes for an occasion of rewarding 
Master Christophe, and will not fail. 

*¢ And with this, Monsieur le Syndic, I pray God have you 
in His keeping. PIBRAC, 

“¢ Chancellor of Navarre. 


‘¢ Nérac.’’ 


“‘Nérac! Pibrac! Crac!’’ cried Babette. ‘‘ There is noth- 
ing to be gotten out of these Gascons; they think only of 
themselves.”’ 

Old Lecamus was looking at his son with ironical amuse- 
ment. 

‘‘And he wants to set a poor boy on horseback whose 
knees and ankles were pounded up for him!’’ cried the 
mother. ‘What a shameful mockery! ”’ 

‘*I do not seem to see you as a councilor in Navarre,’’ said 
the old furrier. 

‘I should like to know what Queen Catherine would do 
for me if I petitioned her,’’ said Christophe, much crestfallen. 

‘She made no promises,’’ said the old merchant, “ but I 
am sure she would not make a fool of you and would remem- 
ber your sufferings. Still, how could she make a councilor- 
at-iaw of a Protestant citizen?” 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 237 


‘¢ But Christophe has never abjured !’’ exclaimed Babettte. 
‘*He may surely keep his own secret as to his religious 
opinions.”’ 

‘¢The Prince de Condé would be less scornful of a coun- 
cilor to the Parlement of Paris,’’ said Lecamus. 

‘*A councilor, father! Is it possible ?”’ 

‘¢ Yes, if you do nothing to upset what I am managing for 
you. My neighbor Lallier here is ready to pay two hundred 
thousand livres, if I add as much again, for the purchase of a 
fine estate entailed on the heirs male, which we will hand 
over to you.”’ 

«¢And I will add something more for a house in Paris,’’ 
said Lallier. 

‘¢ Well, Christophe? ’’ said Babette. 

‘¢ You are talking without the Queen,”’ replied the young 
lawyer. 

Some days after this bitter mortification, an apprentice 

brought this brief note to Christophe— 
- Chaudieu wishes to see his son.”’ 

‘Bring him in,’’ said Christophe. ; 

‘OQ my saint and martyr!’’ cried the preacher, embracing 
the young man, ‘‘ have you gotten over your sufferings ?”’ 

** Yes, thanks to Paré!”’ 

‘¢ Thanks to God, who gave you strength to endure them! 
But what is this I hear? You have passed as a pleader, you 
have taken the oath of fidelity, you have confessed the Whore, 
the Catholic Apostolic, Romish Church ?”’ 

‘« My father insisted.’ 

‘¢ But are we not to leave father and mother and children 
and wife for the sacred cause of Calvinism, and -to suffer all 
things? Oh, Christophe, Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole 
party, the whole world, the future counts on your courage 
and your greatness of soul! We want your life.”’ 

There is this strange feature in the mind of man: the most 
devoted, even in the act of devoting himself, always builds 


238 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDIC. 


up a romance of hope even in the most perilous crisis. Thus, 
when on the river under the Pont au Change, the prince, the 
soldier, and the preacher had required Christophe to carry to 
Queen Catherine the document which, if discovered, would 
have cost him his life, the boy had trusted to his wit, to 
chance, to his perspicacity, and had boldly marched on be- 
tween the two formidable parties—the Guises and the Queen 
—who had so nearly crushed him. While in the torture 
chamber he still had said to himself, ‘‘I shall live through it 
—it is only pain!”’ 

But at this brutal command, ‘‘ Die!’’ to a man who was 
still helpless, hardly recovered from the injuries he had suf- 
fered, and who clung all the more to life for having seen death 
so near, it was impossible to indulge in any such illusions. 

Christophe calmly asked, ‘‘ What do you want of me ?’”’ 

‘To fire a pistol bravely, as Stewart fired at Minard.”’ 

«At whom P”’ 

"The Duc de Guise.”’ 

«¢ Assassination ?”’ 

‘Revenge! Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen 
massacred on one scaffold! A child, little d’Aubigné, said 
as he saw the butchery, ‘They have beheaded all France.’ ’’ 

‘We are to take blows and not return them is the teaching 
of the Gospel,’’ replied Christophe. ‘‘ If-we are to imitate the 
Catholics, of what use is it to reform the church ?”’ 

‘*Oh, Christophe, they have made a lawyer of you, and 
you argue!’ said Chaudieu. 

‘* No, my friend,’’ the youth replied. ‘‘ But principles are 
ungrateful, and you and yours will only be the playthings of 
the House of Bourbon.’’ 

** Oh, Christophe, if you had only heard Calvin, you would 
know that we can turn them like a glove! The Bourbons are 
the glove, and we the hand.”’ 

*‘ Read this,’”’ said Christophe, handing Pibrac’s letter to 
the minister. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 239 


‘* Alas, boy! you are ambitious ; -you can no longer sacri- 
fice yourself ;’’ and Chaudieu went away. 


Not long after this visit, Christophe, with the families of 
Lallier and Lecamus, had met to celebrate the plighting of 
Babette and Christophe in the old parlor, whence Christo- 
phe’s couch was removed, for he could now climb the stairs, 
and was beginning to drag himself about without crutches. 
It was nine in the evening, and they waited for Ambroise 
Paré. The family notary was sitting at a table covered with 
papers. The furrier was selling his house and business to his 
head-clerk, who was to pay forty thousand livres down for 
the house, and to mortgage it as security for the stock-in- 
trade, beside paying twenty thousand livres on account. 

Lecamus had purchased for his son a magnificent house in 
the Rue de Saint-Pierre aux Bceufs, built of stone by Philibert 
de l’Orme, as a wedding gift. The Syndic had also spent 
two hundred and fifty thousand livres out of his fortune, Lal- 
lier paying an equal sum, for the acquisition of a fine manor 
and estate in Picardy, for which five hundred thousand livres 
were asked. This estate being a dependence of the Crown, 
letters patent from the King—called letters of rescript—were 
necessary, beside the payment of considerable fines and fees. 
Thus the actual marriage was to be postponed till the royal 
signature could be obtained. 

Though the citizens of Paris had obtained the right of pur- 
chasing manors and lands, the prudence of the Privy Council 
had placed certain restrictions on the transfer of lands belong- 
ing to the Crown ; and the estate on which Lecamus had had 
his eye for the last ten years was one of these. Ambroise 
had undertaken to produce the necessary permission this very 
evening. Old Lecamus went to and fro between the sitting- 
room and the front door with an impatience that showed the 
eagerness of his ambition. 

At last Ambroise appeared. 


240 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


‘¢ My good friend!’’ exclaimed the surgeon in a great fuss, 
and looking at the supper-table, ‘‘ what is your napery like ? 
Very good. Now bring waxlights, and make haste, make 
haste. Bring out the best of everything you have.’’ 

‘“‘What is the matter?’’ asked the priest of Saint-Pierre 
aux Boeufs. 

«« The Queen-mother and the King are coming to sup with 
you,’’ replied the surgeon. ‘The Queen and King expect 
to meet here an old councilor, whose business is to be sold to 
Christophe, and Monsieur de Thou, who has managed the 
bargain. Do not look as if you expected them; I stole out 
of the Louvre.’’ 

In an instant all were astir. Christophe’s mother and Ba- 
bette’s aunt trotted about in all the flurry of housewives taken 
by surprise. In spite of the confusion into which the an- 
nouncement had thrown the party, preparations were made 
with miraculous energy. Christophe, amazed, astounded, 
overpowered by such condescension, stood speechless, looking 
on at all the bustle. 

‘¢ The Queen and the King here!’’ said the old mother. 

“‘The Queen ?’’ echoed Babette; ‘‘ but what for, what 
to do?”’ 

Within an hour everything was altered ; the old room was 
smartened up, the table shone. A sound of horses was heard 
in the street. The gleam of torches carried by the mounted 
escort brought all the neighbors’ noses to the windows. The 
rush was soon over; no one was left under the arcade but the 
Queen-mother and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de 
Gondi, master of the wardrobe and tutor to the King; Mon- 
sieur de Thou, the retiring councilor; Pinard, secretary of 
state ; and two pages. 

‘*Good people,’’ said the Queen as she went in, ‘the 
King, my son, and I have come to sign the marriage-contract 
of our furrier’s son, but on condition that he remains a Cath- 
olic, Only a Catholic can serve in the Parlement, only a 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 241 


Catholic can own lands dependent on the Crown, only a 
Catholic can sit at table with the King—what do you say, 
Pinard?”’ 

The secretary of state stepped forward, holding the letters 
patent. 

‘If weare not all Catholics here,” said the little King, 
‘‘Pinard will throw all the papers into the fire ; but we are all 
Catholics ?’’ he added, looking round proudly enough at the 
company. 

‘« Yes, Sire,’’ said Christophe Lecamus, bending the knee, 
not without difficulty, and kissing the hand the young King 
held out to him. 

Queen Catherine, who also held out her hand to Chris- 
tophe, pulled him up rather roughly, and leading him into a 
corner, said— 

‘‘Understand, boy, no subterfuges! We are playing an 
honest game? ”’ 

_ €* Yes, madame,’’ he said, dazzled by the splendid reward 
and by the honor the grateful Queen had done him. 

‘* Well, then, Master Lecamus, the King, my son, and I 
permit you to purchase the offices and appointments of this 
good man Groslay, councilor to the Parlement, who is here ?”’ 
said the Queen. ‘‘I hope, young man, that you will follow 
in the footsteps of your lord president.’’ 

De Thou came forward,and said— 

“¢T will answer for him, madame.”’ 

‘¢ Very well, then proceed, notary,’’ said Pinard. 

“¢Since the King, our master, does us the honor of signing 
my daughter’s marriage-contract,’’ cried Lallier, ‘‘I will pay 
the whole price of the estate.’’ 

‘“«The ladies may be seated,’’ said the young King gra- 
ciously. ‘‘As a wedding gift to the bride, with my mother’s 
permission, I remit my fines and fees.’’ 

Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the 
boy-King’s hand. 

16 


242 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘“By heaven, Sire, what loads of money these citizens 
have!’’ said Gondi in his ear. 

And the young King laughed. 

‘‘Their majesties being so graciously inclined,’’ said old 
Lecamus, ‘‘ will they allow me to present to them my successor 
inthe business, and grant him the royal patent as furrier to 
their majesties ?’’ 

‘*Let us see him,’’ said the King, and Lecamus brought 
forward his successor, who was white with alarm. 

Old Lecamus was shrewd enough to offer the young King a 
silver cup which he had bought from Benvenuto Cellini* when 
he was staying in Paris at the Tour de Nesle, at a cost of not 
less than two thousand crowns. 

“‘Oh, mother! what a fine piece of work!’’ cried the 
youth, lifting the cup by its foot. 

“<Tt is Florentine,’’ said Catherine. 

‘¢ Pardon me, madame,’’ said Lecamus; ‘‘ it was made in 
France, though bya Florentine. If it had come from Florence, 
it should have been the Queen’s; but being made in France, 
it is the King’s.”’ 

‘*T accept it, my friend,’’ cried Charles IX., ‘‘ and hence- 
forth I drink out of it.’’ 

‘‘Tt is good enough,’’ the Queen remarked, ‘‘to be in- 
cluded among the Crown treasure.’’ 

‘*And you, Master Ambroise,’’ she went on in an under- 
tone, turning to the surgeon, and pointing to Christophe, 
‘‘have you cured him! Will he walk?”’ 

‘* He will fly,”’ said the surgeon, with a smile. ‘‘ You have 
stolen him from us very cleverly!” 

“¢ The abbey will not starve for lack of one monk!”’ replied 
the Queen, in the frivolous tone for which she has been 
blamed, but which lay only on the surface. 

The supper was cheerful ; the Queen thought Babette pretty, 
and, like the great lady she was, she slipped a diamond ring 


* A noted sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith. 


i 


41 
bot 


aoe 


% 








“you ARE A LOYAL SUBJECT,” SAID CATHERINE. 





‘nu 


ee 
ae) 
—. i . 
a 
, 
a ae 


ey Pat: 


af os Se 





_~ i Ty ee =k - 
rage e nas ae. a7 
a phe bed t~ 
Paw es bd 


ec 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 243 


on the girl’s finger in compensation for the value of the silver 
cup. 

King Charles IX., who afterward was perhaps rather too 
fond of thus invading his subjects’ homes, supped with a good 
appetite ; then, on a word from his new tutor, who had been 
instructed, it is said, to efface the virtuous teaching of Cy- 
pierre, he incited the president of Parlement, the old retired 
councilor, the secretary of state, the priest, the notary, and 
the citizens to drink so deep that Queen Catherine rose to 
go at the moment when she saw that their high spirits were 
becoming uproarious. 

As the Queen rose, Christophe, his father, and the two 
women took up tapers to light her as far as the door of the 
store. Then Christophe made so bold as to pull the Queen’s 
wide sleeve and give her a meaning look. Catherine stopped, 
dismissed the old man and the women with a wave of her 
hand, and said to the young man—‘‘ What ?” 

_ €Tf you can make any use of the information, madame,’’ 
said he, speaking close to the Queen’s ear, ‘‘I can tell you 
that assassins are plotting against the Duc de Guise’s life.”’ 

‘You are a loyal subject,’’ said Catherine with a smile, 
‘*and I will never forget you.”’ 

She held out her hand, famous for its beauty, drawing off 
her glove as a mark of special favor. And Christophe, as he 
kissed that exquisite hand, was more Royalist than ever. 

‘Then I shall be rid of that wretch without my having 
anything to do with it,’’ was her reflection as she put on her 
glove. 

She mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre with her 
two pages. 

Christophe drank, but he was gloomy; Paré’s austere face 
reproached him for his apostasy ; however, later events justi- 
fied the old Syndic. Christophe would certainly never have 
escaped in the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew; his wealth 
and lands would have attracted the butchers. History has 


244 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier’s successor, a 
beautiful woman, whose naked body remained hanging by 
the hair for three days to one of the starlings of the Pont au 
Change. Babette could shudder then as she reflected that 
such a fate might have been hers if Christophe had remained 
a Calvinist, as the Reformers were soon generally called. 
Calvin’s ambition was fulfilled, but not until after his death. - 


This was the origin of the famous Lecamus family of law- 
yers. Tallemant des Réaux was mistaken in saying they had 
come from Picardy. It was afterward to the interest of the 
Lecamus family to refer their beginning to the time when they 
had acquired their principal estate, situated in that province. 

Christophe’s son, and his successor under Louis XIII., was 
father of that rich Président Lecamus, who in Louis XIV.’s 
time built the magnificent mansion which divided with the 
Hétel Lambert the admiration of Parisians and foreigners, 
and which is certainly one of the finest buildings in Paris. 
This house still exists in the Rue de Thorigny, though it was 
pillaged at the beginning of the Revolution, as belonging to 
Monsieur de Juigné, archbishop of Paris. All the paintings 
were then defaced, and the lodgers who have since dwelt there 
have still further damaged it. This fine residence, earned in 
the old house in the Rue de la Pelleterie, still shows what 
splendid results were then the outcome of family spirit. We 
may be allowed to doubt whether modern individualism, 
resulting from the repeated equal division of property, will 
ever raise such edifices. 


PART II. 


THE RUGGIERI’S SECRET. 


Between eleven o’clock and midnight, toward the end of 
October, 1573, two Florentines, brothers, Albert de Gondi, 
marshal of France, and Charles de Gondi la Tour, master of 
the wardrobe to King Charles IX., were sitting at the top of 
a house in the Rue Saint-Honoré on the edge of the gutter. 
Such gutters were made of stone; they ran along below the 
roof to catch the rain-water, and were pierced here and there 
with long gargoyles carved in the form of grotesque creatures 
with gaping jaws. In spite of the zeal of the present genera- 
tion in the destruction of ancient houses, there were still in 
Paris many such gutter-spouts when, not long since, the police 
regulations as to waste-pipes led to their disappearance. A 
- few sculptured gutters are still to be seen in the Saint-Antoine 
quarter, where the low rents have kept owners from adding 
rooms in the roof. 

It may seem strange that two persons invested with such 
important functions should have chosen a perch more befitting 
cats. But to any one who has hunted through the historical 
curiosities of that time, and seen how many interests were 
complicated about the throne, so that the domestic politics of 
France can only be compared to a tangled skein of thread, 
these two Florentines are really cats, and quite in their place 
in a gutter. The devotion to the person of Catherine de’ 
Medici, who had transplanted them to the French Court, re- 
quired them to shirk none of the consequences of their in- 
trusion there. 

But to explain how and why these two courtiers were 
perched up there, it will be necessary to relate a scene which 
had just taken place within a stone’s throw of this gutter, at 

(245) 


246 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


the Louvre, in the fine brown room—which is, perhaps, all 
that remains of Henri II.’s apartments—where the Court was 
in attendance after supper on the two Queens and the King. 
At that time middle-class folk supped at six o’clock, and 
men of rank at seven ;, but people of exquisite fashion supped 
between eight and nine; it was the meal we nowadays call 
- dinner. 

Some people have supposed that etiquette was the invention 
of Louis XIV.; but this isa mistake; it was introduced into 
France by Catherine de’ Medici, who was so exacting that 
the Connétable Anne de Montmorency had more difficulty in 
obtaining leave to ride into the courtyard of the Louvre than 
in winning his sword, and even then the permission was 
granted only on the score of his great age. Etiquette was 
slightly relaxed under the first three Bourbon Kings, but 
assumed an Oriental character under Louis the Great, for it 
was derived from the Lower Empire, which borrowed it from 
Persia. In 1573 not only had very few persons a right to 
enter the courtyard of the Louvre with their attendants and 
torches, just as in Louis XIV.’s time only dukes and peers 
might drive under the porch, but the functions which gave 
the privilege of attending their majesties after supper could 
easily be counted. The Maréchal de Retz, whom we have 
just seen keeping watch on the gutter, once offered a thou- 
sand crowns of that day to the clerk of the closet to get speech 
of Henry III. at an hour when he had no right of entrée. 
And how a certain venerable historian mocks at a view of the 
courtyard of the Castle of Blois, into which the draughtsman 
introduced the figure of a man on horseback ! 

At this hour, then, there were at the. Louvre none but the 
most eminent persons in the kingdom. Queen Elizabeth of 
Austria and her mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici, were 
seated to the left of the fireplace. In the opposite corner the 
King, sunk in his armchair, affected an apathy excusable on 
the score of digestion, for he had eaten like a prince returned 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 247 


from hunting. Possibly, too, he wished to avoid speech in 
the presence of so many persons whose interest it was to detect 
his thoughts. 

’ The courtiers stood, hat in hand, at the farther end of the 
room. Some conversed in undertones; others kept an eye on 
the King, hoping for a glance or a word. One, being ad- 
dressed by the Queen-mother, conversed with her for a few 
minutes. Another would be so bold as to speak a word to 
Charles IX., who replied with a nod ora short answer. A 
German noble, the Count of Solern, was standing in the 
chimney-corner by the side of Charles V.’s grand-daughter, 
with whom he had come to France. Near the young Queen, 
seated on a stool, was her lady-in-waiting, the Countess 
Fieschi, a Strozzi, and related to Catherine. The beautiful 
Madame de Sauves, a descendant of Jacques Cceur, and 
mistress in succession of the King of Navarre, of the King 
of Poland, and of the Duc d’Alencon, had been invited to 
supper, but she remained standing, her husband being merely 
a secretary of state. Behind these two ladies were the 
Gondis, talking to them. They alone were laughing of all 
the dull assembly. Gondi, made Duc de Retz and Gentle- 
man of the Bedchamber, since obtaining the marshal’s baton 
though he had never commanded an army, had been sent as 
the King’s proxy to be married to the Queen at Spires. This 
honor plainly indicated that he, like his brother, was one of 
the few persons whom the King and Queen admitted to a 
certain familiarity. 

On the King’s side the most conspicuous figure was the 
Meréchal de Tavannes, who was at Court on business; Neuf- 
ville de Villeroy, one of the shrewdest negotiators of the 
time, who laid the foundation of the fortunes of his family ; 
Messieurs de Birague and de Chiverni, one in attendance on 
the Queen-mother, the other Chancellor of Anjou and of 
Poland, who, knowing Catherine’s favoritism, had attached 
himself to Henry III., the brother whom Charles IX. regarded 


248 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


as an enemy; Strozzi, a cousin of Queen Catherine, and a 
few more gentlemen, among whom were to be noted the old 
Cardinal de Lorraine and his nephew, the young Duc de 
Guise, both very much kept at a distance by Catherine and 
by the King. ‘These two chiefs of the Holy Alliance, after- 
ward known as the League, established some years since with 
Spain, made a display of the submission of servants who 
await their opportunity to become the masters; Catherine and 
Charles [X. were watching each other with mutual attention. 

At this Court—as gloomy as the room in which it had 
assembled—each one had reasons for sadness or absence of 
mind. The young Queen was enduring all the torments of 
jealousy, and disguised them ineffectually by attempting to 
smile at her husband, whom she adored as a pious woman of 
infinite kindness. Marie Touchet, Charles IX.’s only mis-. 
tress, to whom he was chivalrously faithful, had come home a 
month since from the Castle of Fayet, in Dauphiné, whither . 
she had retired for the birth of her child; and she had 
brought back with her the only son Charles IX. ever had— 
Charles, at first Comte d’Auvergne and afterward Duc d’An- 
gouléme. 

Beside the grief of seeing her rival the mother of the 
King’s son, while she had only a daughter, the poor Queen 
was enduring the mortification of complete desertion. Dur- 
ing his mistress’ absence, the King had made it up with his 
wife with a vehemence which history mentions as one of the 
causes of his death. Thus Marie Touchet’s return made the 
pious Austrian Princess understand how little her husband’s 
heart had been concerned in his love-making. Nor was this 
the only disappointment the young Queen had to endure in 
this matter; till now Catherine de’ Medici had seemed to be 
her friend ; but, in fact, her mother-in-law, for political ends, 
had encouraged her son’s infidelity, and preferred to support 
the mistress rather than the wife. And this is the reason why: 

When Charles IX. first confessed his passion for Marie 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. ~ 249 


Touchet, Catherine looked with favor on the girl for reasons 
affecting her own prospects of dominion. Marie Touchet 
was brought to Court at a very early age, at the time of life 
when a girl’s best feelings are in their bloom; she loved the- 
King passionately for his own sake. ‘Terrified at the gulf into 
which ambition had overthrown the Duchesse de Valentinois, 
better known as Diane de Poitiers, she was afraid too, ne 
doubt, of Queen Catherine, and preferred happiness to splen- 
dor. She thought, perhaps, that a pair of lovers so young 
as she and the King were could not hold their own against the 
Queen-mother. 

And, indeed, Marie, the only child of Jean Touchet, the 
lord of Beauvais and le Quillard, King’s councilor and lieu- 
tenant of the bailiwick of Orleans, half-way between the citi- 
zen class and the lowest nobility, was neither altogether a 
noble nor altogether dourgeoise, and was probably ignorant of 
the objects of innate ambition aimed at by the Pisseleus and 
the Saint-Valliers, women of family who were struggling for 
their families with the secret weapons of love. Marie Touchet, 
alone and of no rank, spared Catherine de’ Medici the annoy- 
ance of finding in her son’s mistress the daughter of some 
great house who might have set up for her rival. 

Jean Touchet, a wit in his day, to whom some poets dedi- 
cated their works, wanted nothing of the Court. Marie, a 
young creature, with no following, as clever and well informed 
as she was simple and artless, suited the Queen-mother to ad- 
miration and won her warm affection. 

In point of fact, Catherine persuaded the Parlement to 
acknowledge the son which Marie Touchet bore to the King 
in the month of April, and she granted him the title of Comte 
d’ Auvergne, promising the King that she would leave the boy 
her personal estate, th/vCounties of Auvergne and Lauraguais. 
Afterward, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, disputed the gift 
when she became Queen of France, and annulled it ; but later 
still, Louis XIII., out of respect to the royal blood of the 


250 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


Valois, indemnified the Comte d’Auvergne by making him 
Duc d’Angouléme. 

Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked for 
nothing, the manor of Belleville, an estate without a title, 
near Vincennes, whither she came when, after hunting, the 
King slept at that royal residence. Charles IX. spent the 
greater part of his later days in that gloomy fortress, and, 
according to some authors, ended his days there as Louis XII. 
had ended his. Though it was very natural that a lover so 
entirely captivated should lavish on the woman he adored 
fresh proofs of affection when he had to expiate his legitimate 
infidelities, Catherine, after driving her son back to his wife’s 
arms, certainly pleaded for Marie Touchet as women can, and 
had won the King back to his mistress again. Whatever could 
keep Charles IX. employed in anything but politics was 
pleasing to Catherine ; and the kind intentions she expressed 
toward this child for the moment deceived Charles IX., who 
was beginning to regard her as his enemy. 

The motives on which Catherine acted in this business 
escaped the discernment of the Queen, who, according to 
Brantéme, was one of the gentlest Queens that ever reigned, 
and who did no harm nor displeasure to any one, even reading 
her Hours in secret. But this innocent Princess began to 
perceive what gulfs yawn round a throne, a terrible discovery 
which might well make her feel giddy; and some still worse 
feeling must have inspired her reply to one of her ladies, who, 
at the King’s death, observed to her that if she had had a son 
she would be Queen-mother and Regent— 

‘* Ah, God be praised that He never gave me ason! What 
would have come of it? The poor child would have been 
robbed, as they tried to rob the King my husband, and I 
should have been the cause of it. God has had mercy on the 
kingdom and has ordered everything for the best.’’ 

This Princess, of whom Brantéme thinks he has given an 
ample description when he had said that she had a complexion 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 251 


of face as fine and delicate as that of the ladies of her Court, 
and very pleasing, and that she had a beautiful shape though 
but of middle height, was held of small account at the Court ; 
and the King’s state affording her an excuse for her double 
grief, her demeanor added to the gloomy hues of a picture to 
which a young Queen less cruelly stricken than she was might 
have given some brightness. The pious Elizabeth was at this 
crisis a proof of the fact that qualities which add lustre toa 
woman in ordinary life may be fatal ina Queen. A Princess 
who did not devote her whole night to prayer would have 
been a valuable ally for Charles [X., who found no. help either 
in his wife or in his mistress. 

As to the Queen-mother, she was absorbed in watching the 
King ; he during supper had made a display of high spirits, 
which she interpreted as assumed to cloak some plan against 
herself. Such sudden cheerfulness was in too strong a contrast 
to the fractious humor he had betrayed by his persistency in 
hunting, and by a frenzy of toil at his forge, where he wrought 
iron, for Catherine to be duped by it. Though she could not 
guess what statesman was lending himself to these schemes 
and plots—for Charles IX. could put his mother’s spies off 
the scent—Catherine had no doubt that some plan against 
her was in the wind. 

The unexpected appearance of Tavannes, arriving at the 
same time as Strozzi, whom she had summoned, had greatly 
aroused her suspicions. By her power of organization Cath- 
erine was superior to the evolution of circumstances; but 
against sudden violence she was powerless. 

As many persons know nothing of the state of affairs, com- 
plicated by the multiplicity of parties which then racked 
France, each leader having his own interests in view, it is 
needful to devote a few words to describing the dangerous 
crisis in which the Queen-mother had become entangled. 
And, as this will show Catherine de’ Medici in a new light, it 
will carry us to the very core of this narrative. 


252 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


_Two words will fully summarize this strange woman, so in- 
teresting to study, whose influence. left_such deep traces-on 
France. These. two words are dominion and astrology. Cath- _ 
erine de’ Medici was excessively. ‘ambitious ;. she had no pas- 
sion but for power. Superstitious and fatalist, as many a man 
of superior mind has been, her only sincere belief was in the ~ 
occult sciences... Without this twofo fold light, she must always — 
remain misunderstood ; and by giving the fi first ] place to her 
faith in astrology, a light will be_thrown_ “on “the. two. _philo- 
sophical figures of this study. nae 

There was a man whom Catherine clung to more.than to 
her children ; this man was Cosmo Ruggieri. She gave him 
rooms in her Hétel de Soissons; she had made him her chief 
counselor, instructing-him to tell her if the stars ratified the 
advice and commonsense of her ordinary advisers. ~~~ 7 

Certain curious antecedent facts justified the power which 
Ruggieri exerted over his mistress till her latest. breath. One 
of the most learned men of the sixteenth century was, beyond 
all doubt, the physician to Catherine’s father, Lorenzo de’ 
Medici, Duke of Urbino. This leech was known as Ruggiero 
the elder (vecchio Ruggier, and in French Roger 7’ Ancien, 
with authors who have written concerning alchemy), to dis- 
tinguish him from his two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the 
Great by writers on the Cabala, and Cosmo Ruggiero, | Cath- 
erine’s astrologer, also known_as Roger- by—various_French 
historians. French custom altered their name to Ruggieri, as 
it did Catherine’s from Medici to Medicis. 

_ The elder Ruggieri, then, was so highly esteemed _by the 
family of the Medici that the two Dukes, Cosmo and Lorenzo, 
were godfathers tohissons. In his capacity of mathematician, 
astrologer, and physician to the Ducal” Howsé—three offices 
‘that were often scarcely distinguished—he cast the horoscope | 
of Catherine’s nativity, in concert with Bazile, the famous. 
mathematician, At that period the occult sciences were culti-_ 


vated with an eagerness which may seem surprising to the 


Seenintieee 
“Sateen 























ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 253 


skeptical spirits of this supremely analytical age, who perhaps 
may fitid-in-this-historical sketch the germ of the positive sci- 
ences which flourish in the nineteenth century—bereft, how- 
ever, of the poetic grandeur brought to them by the daring 
speculators of the sixteenth; for they, instead of applying 
themselves to industry, exalted art and vivified thought. 
The protection universally granted to these sciences by the 
sovereigns of the period was indeed justified by the admirable 
works of inventors who, starting from the search for the great 
work,* arrived at astonishing results. 

Never, in fact, were rulers more curious for these mysteries. 
The Fugger family, in whom every modern Lucullus must 
recognize his chiefs and every banker his masters, were be- 
yond a doubt men of business, not to be caught nodding ; 
well, these practical men, while lending the capitalized wealth 
of Europe to the sovereigns of the sixteenth century—who ran 
into debt quite as handsomely as those of to-day—these illus- 
trious entertainers of Charles V. furnished funds for the retorts 
of Paracelsus. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
Ruggieri the elder was the head of that secret college whence 
came Cardan, Nostradamus, and Agrippa, each in turn physi- 
cian to the Valois; and all the astronomers, astrologers, and 
alchemists who at that period crowded to the Courts of the 
princes of Christendom, and who found especial welcome and 
protection in France from Catherine de’ Medici. 

In the horoscope cast for Catherine by Bazile and Ruggieri 
the elder, the principal events of her life were predicted with 
an accuracy that is enough to drive disbelievers to despair. 
This forecast announced the disasters which, during the siege 
of Florence, affected her early life, her marriage with a 
Prince of France, his unexpected accession to the throne, the 
birth and the number of her children. Three of her sons 
were to reign in succession, her two daughters were to become 
queens ; ail were to die childless. And this was all so exactly 

* Magnum opus. 


254 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


verified that many historians have regarded it as a prophecy 
after the event. 

It is well known that Nostradamus brought to the Castle of 
Chaumont, whither Catherine went at the time of la Renau- 
die’s conspiracy, a woman who had the gift of reading the 
future. Now in the time of Francis II., when the Queen’s 
sons were still children and in good health, before Elizabeth 
de Valois had married Philip II. of Spain, or Marguerite de 
Valois had married Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre, 
Nostradamus and this soothsayer confirmed all the details of 
the famous horoscope. 

This woman, gifted no doubt with second-sight, and one 
of the extensive association of indefatigable inquirers for the 
magnum opus, though her life has evaded the ken of history, 
foretold that the last of these children to wear the crown 
would perish assassinated. Having placed the Queen in front 
of a magical mirror in which a spinning-wheel was reflected, 
each child’s face appearing at the end of a spoke, the sooth- 
sayer made the wheel turn, and the Queen counted the number 
of turns. Each turn was a year of a reign. When Henri 
IV. was placed on the wheel, it went round twenty-two times. 
The woman—some say it was a man—told the terrified Queen 
that Henri de Bourbon would certainly be King of France, 
and reign so many years. Queen Catherine vowed a mortal 
hatred of the Béarnais on hearing that he would succeed the 
last, murdered Valois. 

Curious to know what sort of death she herself would die, 
she was warned to beware of Saint-Germain. Thenceforth, 
thinking that she would be imprisoned or violently killed at 
the Castle of Saint-Germain, she never set foot in it, though, 
by its nearness to Paris, it was infinitely better situated for her 
plans than those where she took refuge with the King in 
troubled times. When she fell ill, a few days after the Duc 
de Guise was assassinated, during the assembly of the States- 
General at Blois, she asked the name of the prelate who came 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC1. 255 


to minister to her. She was told that his name was Saint- 
Germain. 

‘¢T am a dead woman !”’ she cried. 

She died the next day, having lived just the number of 
years allotted to her by every reading of her horoscope. 

This scene, known to the Cardinal de Lorraine, who as- 
cribed it to the Black Art, was being realized ; Francis II. 
had reigned for two turns only of the wheel, and Charles IX. 
was achieving his last. When Catherine spoke these strange 
words to her son Henri as he set out for Poland, ‘‘ You will 
soon return!’’ they must be ascribed to her faith in the 
occult sciences, and not to any intention of poisoning 
Charles IX. Marguerite de France was now Queen of Na- 
varre ; Elizabeth was Queen of Spain; the Duc d’Anjou was 
King of Poland. 

Many other circumstances contributed to confirm Cather- 
ine’s belief in the occult sciences. On the eve of the tour- 
nament where Henri II. was mortally wounded, Catherine 
saw the fatal thrust in a dream. Her astrological council, 
consisting of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had foretold 
the King’s death. History has recorded Catherine’s earnest 
entreaties that he should not enter the lists. The prognostic 
and the dream begotten of the prognostic were verified. 

The chronicles of the time relate another and not less 
strange fact. The courier who brought news of the victory 
of Moncontour arrived at night, having ridden so hard that 
he had killed three horses. The Queen-mother was roused, 
and said, ‘‘I knew it.’’ 

‘*In fact,’’ says Brantéme, ‘‘she had the day before an- 
nounced her son’s success and some details of the fight.”’ 

The astrologer attached to the House of Bourbon foretold 
that the youngest of the Princes in direct descent from Saint- 
Louis, the son of Antoine de Bourbon, would be King of 
France. This prophecy, noted by Sully, was fulfilled pre- 
cisely as described by the horoscope, which made Henry IV, 


s 


256 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


remark that by dint of lies these astrologers hit on the very 
truth. 

Be this as it may, most of the clever men of the time be- 
lieved in the far-reaching ‘‘science of the Magi,’’ as it was 
called by the masters of astrology—or sorcery, as it was 
termed by the people—and they were justified by the verifi- 
cation of horoscopes. 

It was for Cosmo Ruggieri, her mathematician and astrolo- 
ger—her wizard, if you will—that Catherine erected the pillar 
against the corn-market in Paris, the only remaining relic of 
the Hotel de Soissons. Cosmo Ruggieri, like confessors, had 
a mysterious influence which satisfied him, as it does them. 
His secret ambition, too, was superior to that of vulgar minds. 
This man, depicted by romance-writers and playwrights as a 
mere juggler, held the rich abbey of Saint-Mahé in Lower 
Brittany, and had refused high ecclesiastical preferment ; the 
money he derived in abundance from the superstitious mania 
of the time was sufficient for his private undertakings; and 
the Queen’s hand, extended to protect his head, preserved 
every hair of it from harm. 

As to Catherine’s devouring thirst for dominion, her desire 
to acquire power was so great that, in order to grasp it, she 
could ally herself, with the Guises, the enemies of the throne ; 
and to keep the reins of State in her own hands, she adopted 
every means, sacrificing her friends, and even her children. 
This woman could not live without the intrigues of rule, as a 
gambler cannot live without the excitement of play. Though 
she was an Italian and.a daughter of the luxurious Medici, the 
Calvinists, though they calumniated her plentifully, never 
accused her of having a lover. 

Appreciating the maxim, ‘‘ Divide to reign,’’ for twelve 
years she had been constantly playing off one force against 
another. As soon as she took the reins of government into 
her hands, she was compelled to encourage discord to neu- 
tralize the strength of two rival Houses and save the throne. 


_ ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 257 


This necessary system justified Henri II.’s foresight. Cath- 
erine was the inventor of the political see-saw, imitated since ° 
by every prince who has found himself in a similar position ; 
she upheld, by turns, the Calvinists against the Guises, and 
the Guises against the Calvinists. Then, after using the two 
creeds to check each other in the heart of the people, she set 
the Duc d’Anjou against Charles IX. After using things to 
counteract each other, she did the same with men, always 
keeping the clue to their interests in her own hands. 

But in this tremendous game, which requires the head of 
a Louis XI. or a Louis XVIII., the player inevitably is the 
object of hatred to all parties, and is condemned to win un- 
failingly, for one lost battle makes every interest his enemy, 
until indeed by dint of winning he ends by finding no one to 
play against him. The greater part of Charles IX.’s reign was 
the triumph of the domestic policy carried out by this won- 
derful woman. What extraordinary skill Catherine must have 
brought into play to get the chief command of the army given 
_ to the Duc d’Anjou, under a brave young King thirsting for 
glory, capable and generous—and in the face of the Connét- 
able Anne de Montmorency! ‘The Duc d’Anjou, in the eyes 
of all Europe, reaped the honors of Saint-Bartholomew’s Day, 
while Charles IX. had all the odium. After instilling into 
the King’s mind a spurious and covert jealousy of his brother, 
she worked upon this feeling so as to exhaust Charles IX.’s 
really fine qualities in the intrigues of rivalry with his brother. 
Cypierre, their first tutor, and Amyot, Charles IX.’s pre- 
ceptor, had made their royal charge so noble a man, and had 
laid the foundations of so great a reign, that the mother hated 
the son from the very first day when she feared to lose her 
power after having conquered it with so much difficulty. 

These facts have led certain historians to believe that the 
Queen-mother had a preference for Henri III.; but her be- 
havior at this juncture proves that her heart was absolutely 
indifferent toward her children. The Duc d’Anjou, when he 

17 ; 


258 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


went to govern Poland, robbed her of the too! she needed 
to keep Charles IX.’s mind fully occupied by these domestic 
intrigues, which had hitherto neutralized his energy by giving 
food to his vehement feelings. Catherine then hatched the 
conspiracy of la Mole and Coconnas, in which the Duc 
d’Alengon had a hand; and he, when he became Duc d’An- 
jou on his brother’s being made King, lent himself very readily 
to his mother’s views and displayed an ambition which was 
encouraged by his sister Marguerite, Queen of Navarre. 

This plot, now ripened to the point which Catherine de- 
sired, aimed at putting the young Duke and his brother-in- 
law, the King of Navarre, at the head of the Calvinists, at 
seizing Charles IX., thus making the King, who had no heir, 
a prisoner, and leaving the throne free for the Duke, who pro- 
posed to establish Calvinism in France. Only a few days 
before his death, Calvin had won the reward he hoped for— 
the Reformed creed was called Calvinism in his honor. 

La Mole and Coconnas had been arrested fifty days before 
the night on which this scene opens, to be beheaded in the 
following April; and if le Laboureur and other judicious 
writers had not amply proved that they were the victims of 
the Queen-mother, Cosmo Ruggieri’s participation in the 
affair would be enough to show that she secretly directed it. 
This man, suspected and hated by the King for reasons which 
will be presently sufficiently explained, was implicated by the 
inquiries. He admitted that he had furnished la Mole with 
an image representing the King and stabbed to the heart with 
two needles. This form of witchcraft was at that time a cap- 
ital crime. This kind of bedevilment (called in French en- 
vouter, from the Latin vudtus, it is said) represented one of the 
most infernal conceptions that hatred could imagine, and the 
word admirably expresses the magnetic and terrible process 
carried on, in occult science, by constantly active malevolence 
on the person devoted to death ; its effects being incessantly 
suggested by the sight of the wax figure. The law at that 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, 259 


time considered, and with good reason, that the idea thus 
embodied constituted high treason. Charles IX. desired the 
death of the Florentine ; Catherine, more powerful, obtained 
from the Supreme Court, through the intervention of her 
Councilor Lecamus, that her astrologer should be condemned 
only to the galleys. As soon as the King was dead, Ruggieri 
was pardoned by an edict of Henri III.’s,* who reinstated him 
in his revenues and received him at Court. 


Catherine had, by this time, struck so many blows on her 
son’s heart, that at this moment he was only anxious to shake 
off the yoke she had laid on him. Since Marie Touchet’s 
absence, Charles [X., having nothing to occupy him, had 
taken to observing very keenly all that went on around him. 
He had set very skillful snares for certain persons whom he 
had trusted, to test their fidelity, He had watched his moth- 
er’s proceedings, and had kept her in ignorance of his own, 
making use of all the faults she had inculcated in order to 
deceive her. Eager to efface the feeling of horror produced 
in France by the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, he took an 
active interest in public affairs, presided at the council, and 
“tried by well-planned measures to seize the reins of govern- 
ment. Though the Queen might have attempted to counteract 
her son’s endeavors by using all the influence that maternal 
authority and her habit of dominion could have over his 
mind, the downward course of distrust is so rapid that, at the 
first leap, the son had gone too far to be recalled. 

On the day when his mother’s words to the King of Poland 
were repeated to Charles IX., he already felt so ill that the 
most hideous notions dawned on his mind; and when such 
suspicions take possession of a son and a king nothing can 
remove them. In fact, on his death-bed his mother was 
obliged to interrupt him, exclaiming, ‘‘Do not say that, 
monsieur!’’ when Charles IX., intrusting his wife and 


* In 1573 chosen and crowned King of Poland. 


260 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICi. 


daughter to the care of Henri IV., was about to put him on 
his guard against Catherine. 

Though Charles IX. never failed in the superficial respect 
of which she was so jealous, and she never called the kings, 
her sons, anything but monsieur, the Queen-mother had, for 
some months past, detected in Charles’ manner the ill-dis- 
guised irony of revenge held in suspense. But he must be a 
clever man who could deceive Catherine. She held in her 
hand this conspiracy of the Duc d’Alengon and la Mole, so 
as to be able to divert Charles’ effort at emancipation by this 
new rivalry of a brother; but before making use of it, she 
was anxious to dissipate the want of confidence which might 
make her reconciliation with the King impossible—for how 
could he leave the power in the hands of a mother who was 
capable of poisoning him? 

Indeed, at this juncture she thought herself so far in danger 
that she had sent for Strozzi, her cousin, a soldier famous for 
his death. She held secret councils with Birague and the 
Gondis, and never had she so frequently consulted the oracle 
of the Hétel de Soissons. 

Though long habits of dissimulation and advancing years 
had given Catherine that abbess-like countenance, haughty 
and ascetic, expressionless and yet deep, reserved but scrutiniz- 
ing, and so remarkable for any student of her portraits, those 
about her perceived a cloud over this cold, Florentine mirror. 
No sovereign was ever a more imposing figure than this woman 
had made herself since the day when she had succeeded in 
coercing the Guises after the death of Francis II. Her black 
velvet hood, with a peak over the forehead, for she never 
went out of mourning for Henri II., was, as it were, a 
womanly cowl round her cold, imperious features, to which 
she could, however, on occasion, give insinuating Italian 
charms. She was so well-made that she introduced the 
fashion for women to ride on horseback in such a way as to 
display their legs; this is enough to prove that hers were of 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 261 


perfect form. Every lady in Europe thenceforth rode on a 
side-saddle, @ la planchette,* for France had long set the 
fashions. 

To any one who can picture this impressive figure, the 
scene in the great room that evening has an imposing aspect. 
The two Queens, so unlike in spirit, in beauty, and in dress, 
and almost at daggers drawn, were both much too absent- 
minded to give the impetus for which the courtiers waited to 
raise their spirits. 

The dead secret of the drama which, for the past six 
months, the son and mother had been cautiously playing, was 
guessed by some of their followers ; the Italians, more especi- 
ally, had kept an attentive lookout, for if Catherine should 
lose the game, they would all be the victims. Under these 
circumstances, at a moment when Catherine and her son were 
vying with each other in subterfuges, the King was the centre 
of observation. 

Charles IX., tired by a long day’s hunting and by the 
serious reflections he brooded over in secret, looked forty this 
evening. He had reached the last stage of the malady which 
killed him, and which gave rise to grave suspicions of poison. 
According to de Thou, the Tacitus of the Valois, the surgeon 
found unaccountable spots in the King’s body (ex causa in- 
cognita reperti livores). His funeral was even more carelessly 
conducted than that of Francis II. Charles the Ninth was 
escorted from Saint-Lazare to Saint-Denis by Brant6me and a 
few archers of the Guard commanded by the Comte de Solern. 
This circumstance, added to the mother’s supposed hatred of 
her son, may confirm the accusations brought against her by 
de Thou; at least it gives weight to the opinion here ex- 
pressed, that she cared little for any of her children, an indif- 
ference which is accounted for by her faith in the pronounce- 
ment of astrology. Such a woman could not care for the 
tools that were to break in her hands. Henri III. was the 


* Lit.: On a shelf. 


262 - ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


last King under whom she could hope to reign; and that 
was all. 

In our day it seems allowable to suppose that Charles IX. 
died a natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the 
sudden development of his powers, his last struggles to seize 
the reins of government, his desire to live, his waste of 
strength, his last sufferings and his last pleasures, all indicate, 
to impartial judges, that he died of disease of the lungs, a 
malady at that time little understood and of which nothing 
was known ; and its symptoms might lead Charles himself to 
believe that he was poisoned. 

The real poison given him by his mother lay in the evil 
counsels of the courtiers with whom she surrounded him, who 
induced him to waste his intellectual and physical powers, and 
who thus were the cause of a disease which was purely inci- 
dental and not congenital. 

Charles the Ninth, at this period of his life more than at 
any other, bore the stamp of a sombre dignity not unbecoming 
ina King. The majesty of his secret thoughts was reflected 
in his face, which was remarkable for the Italian complexion 
he inherited from his mother. This ivory pallor, so beautiful 
by artificial light, and so well suited with an expression of 
melancholy, gave added effect to his deep blue eyes showing 
narrowly under thick eyelids, and thus acquiring that keen 
acumen which imagination pictures in the glance of a King, 
while their color was an aid to dissimulation. Charles’ eyes 
derived an awe-inspiring look from his high, marked eyebrows 
—accentuating a lofty forehead—which he could lift or lower 
with singular facility. His nose was long and broad and thick 
at the tip—a true lion’s nose; he had large ears; light reddish 
hair; lips of the color of blood, the lips of a consumptive 
man ; the upper lip thin and satirical, the lower full enough to 
indicate fine qualities of feeling. 

The wrinkles stamped on his brow in early life, when ter- 
rible anxieties had blighted its freshness, made his face in- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 263 


tensely interesting; more than one had been caused by 
remorse for the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, a deed which 
had been craftily foisted on him; but there were two other 
lines on his face which would have been eloquent to any stu- 
dent who at that time could have had a special revelation of 
the principles of modern physiology. These lines made a 
deep furrow from the cheek-bones to each corner of the mouth, 
and betrayed the efforts made by an exhausted organization 
to respond to mental strain and to violent physical enjoyment. 
Charles IX. was worn out. The Queen-mother, seeing her 
work, must have felt some remorse, unless, indeed, politics 
stifle such a feeling in all who sit under the purple. If Cath- 
erine could have foreseen the effects of her intrigues on her 
son, she might perhaps have shrunk from them(?). 

It was a terrible spectacle. The King, by nature so strong, 
had become weak ; the spirit, so nobly tempered, was racked 
by doubts; this man, the centre of authority, felt himself 
_ helpless ; the naturally firm temper had lost confidence in its 
power. The warrior’s valor had degenerated into ferocity, 
reserve had become dissimulation, the refined and tender pas- 
sion of the Valois was an insatiable thirst for pleasure. This 
great man, misprized, perverted, with every side of his noble 
spirit chafed to a sore, a King without power, a loving heart 
without a friend, torn a thousand ways by conflicting schemes, 
was, at four-and-twenty, the melancholy image of a man who 
has found everything wanting, who distrists every one, who 
is ready to stake his all, even his life. Only lately had he 
understood his mission, his power, his resources, and the 
obstacles placed by his mother in the way of the pacification 
of the kingdom ; but the light glowed in a broken lamp. 

Two men, for whom the King had so great a regard that 
he had saved one from the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, 
and had dined with the other at a time when his. enemies 
accused him of poisoning the King—his chief physician Jean 
Chapelain, and the great surgeon Ambroise Paré—had been 


264 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICZI. 


sent for from the country by Catherine, and, obeying the 
summons in hot haste, arrived at the King’s bedtime. They 
looked anxiously at their sovereign, and some of the courtiers 
made whispered inquiries, but they answered with due reserve, 
saying nothing of the sentence each had secretly pronounced. 
Now and again the King would raise his heavy eyelids and 
try to conceal from the bystanders the glance he shot at his 
mother. Suddenly he rose, and went to stand in front of the 
fireplace. 

‘¢ Monsieur de Chiverni,’’ said he, ‘‘ why do you keep the 
title of Chancellor of Anjou and Poland? Are you our ser- 
vant or our brother’s?”’ 

‘*T am wholly yours, Sire,’’ replied Chiverni, with a bow. 

‘Well, then, come to-morrow; I mean to send you to 
Spain, for strange things are doing at the Court of Madrid, 
gentlemen.’’ 

The King looked at his wife and returned to his chair. 

‘‘Strange things are doing everywhere,’’ he added in a 
whisper to Marshal Tavannes, one of the favorites of his 
younger days. And he rose to lead the partner of his youth- 
ful pleasures into the recess of an oriel window, saying to 
him— : 

‘¢T want you; stay till the last. I must know whether you 
will be with me or against me. Do not look astonished. I 
am breaking the leading strings. My mother is at the bot- 
tom of all the mischief here. In three months I shall either 
be dead or be really King. As you love your life, silence ! 
You are in my secret with Solern and Villeroy. If the least 
hint is given, it will come from one of you three. Do not 
keep too close to me; go and pay your court to my mother ; 
tell her that I am dying, and that you cannot regret it, for 
that I am but a poor creature.’’ 

Charles IX. walked round the room leaning on his old 
favorite’s shoulder, and discussing his sufferings with him, to 
mislead inquisitive persons; then, fearing that his coldness 


? 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 265 


might be too marked, he went to talk with the two Queens, 
calling Birague to his side. 

Just then Pinard glided in at the door and came up to 
Queen Catherine, slipping in like an eel, close to the wall. 
He murmured two words in the Queen-mother’s ear, and she 
replied with an affirmative nod. The King did not ask what 
this meant, but he went back to his chair with a scowl round 
the room of horrible rage and jealousy. This little incident 
was of immense importance in the eyes of all the Court. 
This exertion of authority without any appeal to the King 
was like the drop of water that makes the glass overflow. 
The young Queen and Countess Fieschi withdrew without the 
King’s paying her the least attention, but the Queen-mother 
attended her daughter-in-law to the door. Though the mis- 
understanding between the mother and son lent enormous 
interest to the movements, looks, and attitude of Catherine 
and Charles IX., their cold composure plainly showed the 
courtiers that they were in the way; as soon as the Queen 
had gone they took their leave. At ten o’clock no one re- 
mained but certain intimate persons—the two Gondis, Ta- 
vannes, the Comte de Solern, Birague, and the Queen-mother. 

The King sat plunged in the deepest melancholy. This 
silence was fatiguing. Catherine seemed at a loss; -she 
wished to retire, and she wanted the King to attend her to 
the door, but Charles remained obstinately lost in thought ; 
she rose to bid him good-night, Charles was obliged to follow 
her example ; she took his arm, and went a few steps with 
him to speak in his ear these few words— 

‘‘Monsieur, I have matters of importance to discuss with 
you.”’ 

As she left, the Queen-mother met the eyes of the Gondis 
reflected in a glass, and gave them a significant glance, which 
her son could not see—all the more so because he himself was 
exchanging meaning looks with the Comte de Solern and Vil- 
leroy; Tavannes was absorbed in thought. 


266 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


‘‘Sire,’’ said the Maréchal de Retz, coming out of his 
meditations, ‘‘ you seem right royally bored. Do you never 
amuse yourself nowadays? Heaven above us! where are the 
times when we went gadding about the streets of nights? ”’ 

‘¢ Yes, those were good times,’’ said the King, not without 
a sigh. 

«Why not be off now?’’ said Monsieur de Birague, bow- 
ing himself out, with a wink at the Gondis. 

‘TI always think of that time with pleasure,’ cried the 
Maréchal de Retz. 

‘“¢T should like to see you on the roofs, Monsieur le Maré- 
chal,’ said Tavannes. ‘‘Sacré chat d’ Italie (Sacred Italian 
cat), if you might but break your neck,’’ he added in an 
undertone to the King. 

‘¢T know not whether you or I should be nimblest at jump- 
ing across a yard or a street; but what I do know is, that 
neither of us is more afraid of death than the other,’’ replied 
the Duc de Retz. 

‘¢ Well, Sire, will you come to scour the town as you did 
when you were young ?’’ said the master of the wardrobe to 
the King. 

Thus at four-and-twenty the unhappy King was no longer 
thought young, even by his flatterers. Tavannes and the King 
recalled, like two schoolfellows, some of the good tricks they 
had perpetrated in Paris, and the party was soon made up. 
The two Italians, being dared to jump from roof to roof across 
the street, pledged themselves to follow where the King should 
lead. They all went to put on common clothes. 

The Comte de Solern, left alone with the King, looked at 
him with amazement. The worthy German, though filled 
with compassion as he understood the position of the King of 
France, was fidelity and honor itself, but he had not a lively 
imagination. King Charles, surrounded by enemies, and 
trusting no one, not even his wife—who, not knowing that 
his mother and all her servants were inimical to him, had 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 267 


committed some little indiscretions—was happy to have found 
in Monsieur de Solern a devotion which justified complete 
confidence. ‘Tavannes and Villeroy were only partly in the 
secret. The Comte de Solern alone knew the whole of the 
King’s schemes ; and he was in every way very useful to his 
master, inasmuch that he had a handful of confidential and 
attached men at his orders who obeyed him blindly. Mon- 
sieur de Solern, who held a command in the Archers of the 
Guard, had for some days been picking from among his men 
some who were faithful in their adherence to the King, to 
form a chosen company. The King could think of every- — 
thing. 

‘¢ Well, Solern,’’ said Charles [X., ‘‘ we are needing a pre- 
text for spending a night out of doors. I had the excuse, of 
course, of Madame de Belleville; but this is better, for my 
mother can find out what goes on at Marie’s house.”’ 

Monsieur de Solern, as he was to attend the King, asked if 
he might not go the rounds with some of his Germans, and 
to this Charles consented. By eleven o’clock the King, in 
better spirits now, set out with his three companions to ex- 
plore the neighborhood of the Rue Saint-Honoré. 

‘¢T will take my lady by surprise,’’ said Charles-to Tavan- 
nes as they went along the Rue de 1’Autruche. 

To make this nocturnal play more intelligible to those who 
may be ignorant of the topography of old Paris, it will be 
necessary to explain the position of the Rue de 1’Autruche. 
The part of the Louvre, begun by Henri II., was still being 
built amid the wreck of houses. Where the wing now stands 
looking over the Pont des Arts, there was at that time a 
garden. In the place of the Colonnade there were a moat 
and a drawbridge on which, somewhat later, a Florentine, the 
Maréchal d’Ancre, met his death. Beyond this garden rose 
the turrets of the Hétel de Bourbon, the residence of the 
princes of that branch till the day when the constable’s 
treason (after he was ruined by the confiscation of his posses- 


268 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


sions, decreed by Francis I., to avoid having to decide be- 
tween him and his mother) put an end to the trial that had 
cost France so dear, by the confiscation of the constable’s 
estates. 

This castle, which looked well from the river, was not de- 
stroyed till the time of Louis XIV. 

The Rue de 1]’Autruche ran from the Rue Saint-Honoré, 
ending at the Hétel de Bourbon on the quay. This street, 
named de |’Autriche on some old plans, and de 1’Austruc on 
others, has, like many more, disappeared from the map. 
The Rue des Poulies would seem to have been cut across the 
ground occupied by the houses nearest to the Rue Saint- 
Honoré. Authors have differed, too, as to the etymology of 
the name. Some suppose it to be derived from a certain 
Hétel d’Osteriche (Os¢errichen), inhabited in the fourteenth 
century by a daughter of that house who married a French 
nobleman. Some assert that this was the site of the royal 
aviaries, whither, once on a time, all Paris crowded to see a’ 
living ostrich. 

Be it as it may, this tortuous street was made notable by 
the residences of certain Princes of the Blood, who dwelt in 
the vicinity of the Louvre. Since the sovereign had deserted 
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where for several centuries he 
had lived in the Bastille, and removed to the Louvre, many 
of the nobility had settled near the palace. The Hétel de 
Bourbon had its fellow in the old Hétel d’Alengon in the Rue 
Saint-Honoré. This, the palace of the Counts of that name, 
always an appanage of the Crown, was at this time owned by 
Henry II.’s fourth son, who subsequently took the title of 
Duc d’Anjou, and who died in the reign of Henri III., to 
whom he gave no little trouble. The estate then reverted to 
the Crown, including the old palace, which was pulled down. 
In those days a prince’s residence was a vast assemblage of 
buildings; to form some idea of its extent, we have only to 
go and see the space covered by the Hétel de Soubise, which 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 269 


is still standing in the Marais. Such a palace included all the 
buildings necéssary to these magnificent lives, which may 
seem almost problematical to many persons who see how poor 
is the state of a prince in these days. ‘There were immense 
stables, lodgings for physicians, librarians, chancellor, chap- 
lains, treasurers, officials, pages, paid servants, and lackeys, 
attached to the prince’s person. 

Not far from the Rue Saint-Honoré, in a garden belonging 
to the Hétel, stood a pretty little house built in 1520 by com- 
mand of the celebrated Duchesse d’Alengon, which had since 
been surrounded with other houses erected by merchants, 
Here the King had installed Marie Touchet. Although the 
Duc d’Alencgon was engaged in a conspiracy against the King 
at that time, he was incapable of annoying him in such a 
matter. 

As the King was obliged to pass by his lady’s door on his 
way down the Rue Saint-Honoré, where at that time highway 
_ robbers had no opportunities within the Barriére des Sergents, 
he could hardly avoid stopping there. While keeping a look- 
out for some stroke of luck—a belated citizen to be robbed 
or the watch to be thrashed—the King scanned every window, 
peeping in wherever he saw lights, to see what was going on, 
or to overhear a conversation. But he found his good city in 
a provokingly peaceful state. On a sudden, as he came in 
front of the house kept by a famous perfumer named René, 
who supplied the Court, the King was seized with one of 
those swift inspirations which are suggested by antecedent 
observations, as he saw a bright light shining from the top- 
most window of the roof. 

This perfumer was strongly suspected of doctoring rich 
uncles when they complained of illness; he was credited at 
Court with the invention of the famous Eiixir & successions— 
the Elixir of Inheritance—and had been accused of poisoning 
Jeanne d’Albret, Henri IV.’s mother, who was buried with- 
out her head having been opened, in spite of the express 


270 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDIC. 


orders of Charles IX., as a contemporary* tells us. For two 
months past the King had been seeking some stratagem to 
enable him to spy out the secrets of René’s laboratory, whither 
Como Ruggieri frequently resorted. Charles intended, if 
anything should arouse his suspicions, to take steps himself 
without the intervention of the police or the law, over whom 
his mother would exert the influence of fear or of bribery. 

It is beyond all doubt that during the sixteenth century, 
and the years immediately preceding and following it, poison- 
ing had been brought to a pitch of perfection which remains 
unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably 
proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was 
at that time the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many 
of which are lost. Romancers have made such extravagant 
use of this fact, that whenever they introduce Italians they 
make them play the part of assassins and poisoners. 

But though Italy had then the monopoly of those subtle 
poisons of which historians tell us, we must regard her supre- 
macy in toxicology merely as part of her preéminence in 
all branches of knowledge and in the arts, in which she led 
the way for all Europe. The crimes of the period were 
not hers alone; she served the passions of the age, as she 
built magnificently, commanded armies, painted glorious fres- 
coes, sang songs, loved Queens, and directed politics. At 
Florence this hideous art had reached such perfection that a 
woman dividing a peach with a duke could make use of a 
knife of which one side only was poisoned, and, eating the 
untainted half, dealt death with the other. A pair of per- 
fumed gloves introduced a mortal malady by the pores of the 
hand ; poison could be concealed in a bunch of fresh roses of 
which the fragrance, inhaled but once, meant certain death. 
Don Juan of Austria, it is said, was poisoned by a pair of 
boots. 

So King Charles had a right to be inquisitive, and it is easy 


* De Thou: “ Historia sui Temporis.” 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 271 


to imagine how greatly the dark suspicions which tormented 
him added to his eagerness to detect René in the act. 

The old fountain, since rebuilt, at the corner of the Rue de 
l’Arbre-Sec, afforded this illustrious crew the necessary access 
to the roof of a house, which the King pretended that he 
wished to invade, not far from René’s. Charles, followed by 
his companions, began walking along the roofs, to the great 
terror of the good folk awakened by these marauders, who 
would call to them, giving them some coarsely grotesque name, 
listen to family squabbles or love-makings, or do some vexa- 
tious damage. 

When the two Gondis saw Tavannes and the King clam- 
bering along the roof adjoining René’s, the Maréchal de 
Retz sat down, saying he was tired, and his brother remained 
with him. 

**So much the better,’’ thought the King, glad to be quit 
of his spies. 

Tavannes made fun of the two Italians, who were then left 
alone in the midst of perfect silence in a place where they 
had only the sky above them and the cats for listeners. And 
the brothers took advantage of this position to speak out 
thoughts which they never would have uttered elsewhere— 
thoughts suggested by the incidents of the evening. 

‘¢ Albert,’’ said the Grand Master to the marshal, ‘ the 
King will get the upper hand of the Queen; we are doing 
bad business so far as our fortunes are concerned by attach- 
ing ourselves to Catherine’s. If we transfer our, services to 
the King now, when he is seeking some support against his 
mother, and needs capable men to rely upon, we shall not be 
turned out like wild beasts when the Queen-mother is ban- 
ished, imprisoned, or killed.”’ 

‘¢ You will not get far, Charles, by that road,’’ the marshal 
replied. ‘‘ You will follow your master into the grave, and 
he has not long to live ; he is wrecked by dissipation ; Cosmq 
Ruggieri has foretold his death next year.”’ 


272 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘© A dying boar has often gored the hunter,’’ said Charles 
de Gondi. ‘‘ This plot of the Duc d’Alengon with the King 
of Navarre and the Prince de Condé, of which la Mole and 
Coconnas are taking the ovus, is dangerous rather than useful. 
In the first place, the King of Navarre, whom the Queen- 
mother hopes to take in the fact, is too suspicious of her, and 
will have nothing to do with it. He means to get the benefit 
of the conspiracy and run none of the risks. And now, the 
last idea is to place the crown on the head of the Duc d’Alen- 
con, who is to turn Calvinist.’’ 

‘‘Foolery! Dolt that you are, do you not see that this 
plot enables our Queen to learn what the Huguenots can do 
with the Duc d’Alengon, and what the King means to do with 
the Huguenots? For the King is temporizing with them. 
And Catherine, to set the King riding on a wooden horse, 
will betray the plot which must nullify his schemes.’’ 

‘*Ay!’’ said Charles de Gondi, ‘‘ by dint of taking our 
advice she can beat us at our own game. ‘That is very 
good.”’ 

‘Good for the Duc d’Anjou, who would rather be King 
of France than King of Poland; I am going to explain mat- 
ters to him.”’ 

‘‘You are going, Albert? ”’ 

‘To-morrow. Is it not my duty to attend the King of 
Poland? I shall join him at Venice, where the ladies have 
undertaken to amuse him.”’ 

‘¢ You are prudence itself.’’ 

“Che bestia’ I assure you solemnly that there is not 
the slightest danger for either of us at Court. If there 
were, should I leave? I would stick to our kind mis- 
tress.”’ 

‘‘Kind!’’ said the Grand Master. <‘‘ She is the woman to 
drop her tools if she finds them too heavy.”’ 

“‘O cogltone! You call yourself a soldier, and are afraid 
of death? Every trade has its duties, and our duty is to 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICL 273 


Fortune. When we attach ourselves to monarchs who are 
the fount of all temporal power, and who protect and ennoble 
and enrich our families, we have to give them such love as 
inflames the soul of the martyr for heaven ; when they sacri- 
fice us for the throne we may perish, for we die as much for 
ourselves as for them, but our family does not perish. Zcco; 
I have said! ”’ 

‘You are quite right, Albert ; you have got the old duchy 
of Retz.’’ 

‘¢ Listen to me,’’ said the Duc de Retz. ‘* The Queen has 
great hopes of the Ruggieri and their arts to reconcile her to 
her son. When that artful youth refused to have anything to 
do with René, our Queen easily guessed what her son’s suspi- 
cions were. But who can tell what the King has in his pocket ? 
Perhaps he is only doubting as to what fate he intends for his 
mother; he hates her, you understand? He said something 
of his purpose to the Queen, and the Queen talked of it to 
Madame de Fieschi; Madame de Fieschi carried it on to the 
-Queen-mother, and since then the King has kept out of his 
wife’s way.” 

‘* It was high time ”’ said Charles de Gondi. 

‘© What to do?’’ asked the marshal. 

‘¢To give the King something to do,’’ replied the Grand 
Master, who, though he was on less intimate terms with 
Catherine than his brother, was not less clear-sighted. 

‘¢Charles,’’ said de Retz gravely, ‘I have started on a 
splendid road; but if you want to be a Duke, you must, like 
me, be our mistress’ ready tool. She will remain Queen; she 
is the strongest. Madame de Sauves is still devoted to her; 
and the King of Navarre and the Duc d’Alengon are devoted 
to Madame de Sauves; Catherine will always have them in 
leading strings under this King, as she will have them under 
King Henri III. Heaven send he may not be ungrateful! ”’ 

“Why?” 

‘¢ His mother does too much for him.”’ 

18 





274 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘‘Hark! There is a noise in the Rue Saint-Honoré,”’ 
cried Charles de Gondi. ‘‘ René’s door is being locked. 
Can you not hear a number of men? They must have taken 
the Ruggieri.’’ 

‘¢The devil! What a piece of prudence! The King has 
not shown his usual impetuosity. But where will he imprison 
them? Let us see what is going on.” 

The brothers reached the corner of the Rue de |’ Autruche 
at the moment when the King was entering his mistress’ 
house. By the light of the torches held by the gatekeeper 
they recognized Tavannes and the Ruggieri. 

*¢ Well, Tavannes,’’ the Grand Master called out as he ran 
after the King’s companion, who was making his way back 
to the Louvre, ‘‘ what adventures have you had?”’ 

‘¢We dropped on a full council of wizards, and arrested 
two who are friends of yours, and who will explain for the 
benefit of French noblemen by what means you, who are not 
Frenchmen, have contrived to clutch two Crown offices,’’ 
said Tavannes, half in jest. 

‘¢ And the King?’’ asked the Grand Master, who was not 
much disturbed by Tavannes’ hostility. 

‘¢ He is staying with his mistress.”’ 

‘*We have risen to where we stand by the most absolute 
devotion to our masters, a brilliant and noble career which 
you too have adopted, my dear Duke,’’ replied the Maréchal 
de Retz. 


The three courtiers walked on in silence. As they bade 
each other good-night, rejoining their retainers, who escorted 
them home, two men lightly glided along the Rue de 1’Au- 
truche in the shadow of the wall. These were the King and 
the Comte de Solern, who soon reached the river-bank at a 
spot where a boat and rowers, engaged by the German Count, 
were awaiting them. In a few minutes they had reached the 
opposite shore, 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 275 


‘¢ My mother is not in bed,’’ cried the King, ‘she will see 
us; we have not made a good choice of our meeting-place.”’ 

‘¢ She will think some duel is in the wind,’’ said Solern. 
‘*And_ how is she to distinguish who we are at this dis- 
tance ?’”’ 

‘Well! Even if she sees me!’’ cried Charles IX, ‘I 
have made up my mind now.”’ 

The King and his friend jumped on shore, and hurried off 
toward the Pré aux Clercs. On arriving there, the Comte de 
Solern, who went first, parleyed with a man on sentry, with 
whom he exchanged a few words, and who then withdrew to 
a group of others. 

Presently two men, who seemed to be princes by the way 
the outposts saluted them, left the spot where they were in 
hiding behind some broken fencing, and came to the King, 
to whom they bent the knee; but Charles IX. raised them 
before they could touch the ground, saying— 

‘No ceremony ; here we are all gentlemen together.’’ 

These three were now joined by a venerable old man, who 
might have been taken for the Chancellor de l’H6pital, but 
that he had died the year before. Then all four walked on 
as quickly as possible to reach a spot where their conversation 
could not be overheard by their retainers, and Solern followed 
them at a little distance to keep guard over the King. This 
faithful servant felt some doubts which Charles did not share, 
for to him, indeed, life was too great a burden. The Count 
de Solern was the only witness present at the meeting on the 
King’s side. 

It soon became interesting. 

‘« Sire,’’? said one of the speakers, ‘‘the Connétablé de 
Montmorency, the best friend the King, your father, had, and 
possessed of all his secrets, agreed with the Maréchal de 
Saint-André that Madame Catherine should be sewn up in a 
sack and thrown into the river. If that had been done, many 
good men would be alive now.”’ 


276 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


«‘T have executions enough on my conscience, monsieur,”’ 
replied the King. 

‘‘Well, Sire,’’ said the youngest of the four gentlemen, 
‘‘ from the depths of exile Queen Catherine would still manage 
to interfere and find men to help her. Have we not every- 
thing to fear from the Guises, who, nine years since, schemed 
for a monstrous Catholic alliance, in which your majesty is 
not included, and which is adanger to the throne? This alli- 
ance is a Spanish invention—for Spain still cherishes the hope 
of leveling the Pyrenees. Sire, Calvinism can save France by 
erecting a moral barrier between this nation and one that 
aims at the Empire of the world. If the Queen-mother finds 
herself in banishment, she will throw herself on Spain and the 
Guises.”’ 

‘‘Gentlemen,’’ said the King, ‘‘I will have you to know 
that, with your help, and with peace established on a basis of 
confidence, I will undertake to make every soul in the king- 
dom quake. By God and every sacred relic! it is time that 
the royal authority should assert itself. Understand this 
clearly ; so far, my mother is right, power is slipping from 
your grasp, as it is from mine. Your estates, your privi- 
leges are bound to the throne; when you have allowed religion 
to be overthrown, the hands you are using as tools will turn 
against the Monarchy and against you. 

‘*T have had enough of fighting ideas with weapons that 
cannot touch them. Let us see whether Protestantism can 
make its way if left to itself; above all, let us see what the 
spirit of that faction means to attack. The admiral, God be 
merciful to him, was no enemy of mine. He swore to me 
that he would restrain the revolt within the limits of spiritual 
feeling, and in the temporal kingdom secure mastery to the 
King and submissive subjects. Now, gentlemen, if the thing 
is still in your power, set an example, and help your sovereign 
to control the malcontents who are disturbing the peace of 
both parties alike. War robs us of all our revenue, and ruins 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 277 


the country; I am weary of this troubled State—so much so 
that, if it should be absolutely necessary, I would sacrifice my 
mother. I would do more: I would have about me a like 
_ number of Catholics and of Protestants, and I would hang 
Louis XI.’s axe over their heads to keep them equal. If Mes- 
sieurs de Guise plot a Holy Alliance which endangers the 
Crown, the executioner shall begin on them. 

‘*T understand the griefs of my people, and am quite ready 
to cut freely at the nobles who bring trouble on our country. 
I care little for questions of conscience; I mean henceforth 
to have submissive subjects who will work, under my rule, at 
the prosperity of the State. 

‘‘Gentlemen, I give you ten days to treat with your 
adherents, to break up your plots, and return to me, who will 
be a father to you. If you are refractory, you will see great 
changes. I shall make use of smaller men who, at my 
bidding, will rush upon the great lords. I will follow the 
_ example of a king who pacified his realm by striking down 
greater men than you are who dared to defy him. If Catholic 
troops are wanting, I can appeal to my brother of Spain to 
defend a threatened throne; nay, and if I need a Minister to 
carry out my will, he will lend me the Duke of Alva.”’ 

‘¢In that event, Sire, we can find Germans to fight your 
Spaniards,’’ said one of the party. 

<¢T may remind you, cousin,’’ said Charles IX. coldly, ‘‘ that 
my wife’s name is Elizabeth of Austria; your allies on that 
side might fail you. But take my advice; let us fight this 
alone without calling in the foreigner. You are the object of 
my mother’s hatred, and you care enough for me to play the 
part of second in my duel with her—well, then, listen. You 
stand so high in my esteem that I offer you the office of high 
constable ; you will not betray us as the other has done.”’ 

The Prince thus addressed took the King’s hand in a 
friendly grasp, exclaiming— 

“‘God’s ’ounds, brother, that is indeed forgiving evil! 


278 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


But, Sire, the head cannot move without the tail, and our 
tail is hard to drag along. Give us more than ten days. We 
still need at least a month to make the rest hear reason; by 
the end of that time we shall be the masters.’’ 

<¢ A month, so ‘be it; Villeroy is my only plenipotentiary. 
Take no word but his, whatever any one may say.”’ 

‘‘One month,’’ said the three other gentlemen ;that will 
be enough time.’’ 

‘¢Gentlemen,’’ said the King, ‘‘ we are but five, all men of 
mettle. If there is any treachery, we shall know with whom 
to deal.”’ 

The three gentlemen left the King with every mark of deep 
respect and kissed his hand. 

As the King recrossed the Seine, four o’clock was striking 
by the Louvre clock. 

Queen Catherine was still up. 

‘*My mother is not gone to bed,’’ said Charles to the 
Comte de Solern. 

‘« She too has her forge,’’ said the German. 

‘¢ My dear Count, what must you think of a king who is 
reduced to conspiracy ?’’ said Charles IX. bitterly, after a 
pause. 

“‘T think, Sire, that if you would only allow me to throw 
that woman into the river, as our young friend said, France 
would soon be at peace.”’ 

‘¢ Parricide !—-and after Saint-Bartholomew’s!’’ said the 
King. ‘No, no—Exile. Once fallen, my mother would 
not have an adherent or a partisan.’’ 

‘¢ Well, then, Sire,’’ the Count went on, ‘‘ allow me to take 
her into custody now, at once, and escort her beyond the 
frontier ; for by to-morrow she will have won you round again 
to her views.”’ 

‘* Well,’ said the King, **come to my forge; no one can 
hear us there. Beside, Iam anxious that my mother should 
know nothing of the arrest of the Ruggieri. If she knows I 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICZ. 279 


am within, the good lady will suspect nothing, and we will 
concert the measures for arresting her.’’ 

When the King, attended by Solern, went into the low 
room which served as his workshop, he smiled as he pointed 
to his forge and various tools. 

‘I do not suppose,”’ said he, ‘‘ that of all the kings France 
may ever have, there will be another with a taste for such a 
craft. But when I am really King, I shall not forge swords; 
they shall all be sheathed.”’ 

‘¢ Sire,’’ said the Comte de Solern, ‘‘the fatigues of tennis, 
your work at the forge, hunting, and—may I say it ?—love- 
making, are chariots lent you by the devil to hasten your 
journey to Saint-Denis.”’ 

‘‘Ah, Solern!’’ said the King sadly, ‘‘if only you could 
feel the fire they have set burning in my heart and body. 
Nothing can slake it. Are you sure of the men who are 
guarding the Ruggieri ?”’ 

*‘As sure as of myself.’’ 

‘¢ Well, in the course of this day I shall have made up my 
mind. Think out the means of acting, and I will give you 
my final instructions at five this evening, at Madame de Bel- 
leville’s.”’ 

4 

The first gleams of daybreak were struggling with the lights 
in the King’s workshop, where the Comte de Solern had left 
him alone, when he heard the door open and saw his mother, 
looking like a ghost in the gloom. Though Charles IX. was 
highly strung and nervous, he did not start, although under 
the circumstances this apparition had an ominous and gro- 
tesque aspect. 

‘¢ Monsieur,”’ said she, ‘‘ you are killing yourself- sis 

‘¢T am fulfilling my horoscopes,’’ he retorted, with a bitter 
smile. ‘‘ But you, madame, are you as ill as I am?”’ 

‘¢ We have both watched through the night, monsieur, but 
with very different purpose. When you were setting out to 





280 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


confer with your bitterest enemies in the open night, and 
hiding it from your mother, with the connivance of Tavannes 
and the Gondis, with whom you pretended to be scouring the 
town, I was reading dispatches which prove that a terrible 
conspiracy is hatching, in which your brother the Duc d’Al- 
engon is implicated with your brother-in-law, the King of 
Navarre, the Prince de Condé, and half the nobility of your 
kingdom. Their plan is no less than to snatch the Crown 
from you by taking possession of your person. These gentle- 
men have already a following of fifty thousand men, all good 
soldiers.’’ 

‘Indeed !’’ said the King incredulously. 

‘Your brother is becoming a Huguenot,’’ the Queen went 
on. 

‘My brother joining the Huguenots?’’ cried Charles, 
brandishing the iron bar he held. 

‘©VYes. The Duc d’Alencon, a Huguenot at heart, is about 
to declare himself. Your sister, the Queen of Navarre, has 
scarcely a tinge of affection left for you. She loves Monsieur 
le Duc d’Alengon, she loves Bussy, and she also loves little la 
Mole.” 

‘¢ What a large heart!’’ said the King. 

**Little la Mole, to grow great,’’ the Queen went on, ‘‘can 
think of no better means than making a King of France to 
his mind. Then, it is said, he is to be high constable.”’ 

‘¢ That damned Margot!’’ cried the King. ‘‘ This is what 
comes of her marrying a heretic 

‘¢That would be nothing; but then there is the head of the 
younger branch, whom you have placed near the throne 
against my warnings, and who only wants to see you all kill 
each other! The House of Bourbon is the enemy of the 
House of Valois. Mark this, monsieur, a younger branch 
must always be kept in abject poverty, for it is born with the 
spirit of conspiracy, and it is folly to give it weapons when it 
has none, or to leave them in its possession when it takes 


° 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 281 


them. The younger branches must be impotent for mischief 
—that is the law of sovereignty. The sultans of Asia 
observe it. 

‘*The proofs are upstairs in my closet, whither I begged 
you to follow me when we parted last night, but you had 
other projects. Within a month, if we do not take a high 
hand, your fate will be that of Charles the Simple.”’ 

‘*Within a month! ’”’ exclaimed Charles, amazed at the 
coincidence of this period with the term fixed by the princes 
that very night. ‘‘In a month we shall be the masters,’’ 
thought he to himself, repeating their words. ‘‘ You have 
proofs, madame ?”’ he asked aloud. 

‘‘They are unimpeachable, monsieur; they are supplied 
by my daughter Marguerite. Terrified by the probable out- 
come of such a coalition, in spite of her weakness for your 
brother d’Alengon, the throne of the Valois lay, for once, 
nearer to her heart than all her amours. She asks indeed, as 
the reward of her revelation, that la Mole shall go scot-free ; 
but that popinjay seems to me to be a rogue we ought to get 
rid of, as well as the Comte de Coconnas, your brother 
d’Alengon’s right-hand man. As to the Prince de Condé, 
that boy would agree to anything so long as I may be flung 
into the river ; I do not know if that is his idea of a handsome 
return on his wedding-day for the pretty wife I got him. 

‘¢ This is a serious matter, monsieur. You spoke of pre- 
dictions! I know of one which says that the Bourbons will 
possess the throne of the Valois ; and if we do not take care, 
it will be fulfilled. Do not be vexed with your sister, she has 
acted well in this matter. 

‘¢ My son,’’ she went on, after a pause, with an assumption 
of tenderness in her tone, ‘‘ many evil-minded persons, in the 
interest of the Guises, want to sow dissension between you 
and me, though we are the only two persons in the realm 
whose interests are identical. Reflect. You blame yourself 
now, I know, for Saint-Bartholomew’s night; you blame me 


282 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


for persuading you to it. But Catholicism, monsieur, ought 
to be the bond of Spain, France, and Italy, three nations 
which by a secretly and skillfully worked scheme may, in the 
course of time, be united under the House of Valois. Do not 
forfeit your chances by letting the cord slip which includes 
these three kingdoms in the pale of the same faith. 

‘Why should not the Valois and the Medici carry out, to 
their great glory, the project of Charles V., who lost his 
head? Let those descendants, of Jane the Crazy, people the 
new world at which they are grasping. ‘The Medici, masters 
of Florence and Rome, will subdue Italy to your rule; they 
will secure all its advantages by a treaty of commerce and 
alliance, and recognize you as their liege lord for the fiefs of 
Piedmont, the Milanese, and Naples, over which you have 
rights. ‘These, monsieur, are the reasons for the war to the 
death we are waging with the Huguenots. Why do you com- 
pel us to repeat these things ?P 

‘¢ Charlemagne made a mistake when he pushed northward. 
France is a body of which the heart is on the Gulf of Lyons, 
and whose two arms are Spain and Italy. Thus we should 
command the Mediterranean, which is like a basket into 
which all the wealth of the East is poured to the benefit of 
the Venetians now, in the teeth of Philip II. 

«And if the friendship of the Medici and your inherited 
rights can thus entitle you to hope for Italy, force, or alliance, 
or perhaps inheritance, may give you Spain. There you must 
step in before the ambitious House of Austria, to whom the 
Guelphs would have sold Italy, and who still dream of pos- © 
sessing Spain. Though your wife is a daughter of that line, 
humble Austria, hug her closely to stifle her! There lie the 
enemies of your dominion, since from thence comes aid for 
the Reformers. Do not listen to men who would profit by our 
disagreement, and who fill your head with trouble by repre- 
senting me as your chief enemy at home. Have I hindered 
you from having an heir? Is it my fault that your mistress 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 283 


has a son and your wife only a daughter? Why have you 
not by this time three sons, who would cut off all this sedition 
at the root? Is it my part, monsieur, to reply to these ques- 
tions? If you hada son, would Monsieur d’ Alengon conspire 
against you ?”’ 

As she spoke these words, Catherine fixed her eyes on 
Charles IX. with the fascinating gaze of a bird of prey on 
its victim. The daughter of the Medici was beautiful in her 
way ; her real feelings illumined her face, which, like that of 
a gambler at the green-table, was radiant with ambitious 
greed. Charles IX. saw her no longer as the mother of one 
man, but, as she had been called, the mother of armies and 
empires (mater castrorum). Catherine had spread the pinions 
of her genius, and was boldly soaring in the realm of high 
politics of the Medici and the Valois, sketching the vast plans 
which had frightened Henri II., and which, transmitted by 
the Medici to Richelieu,* were stored in the cabinet of the 
House of Bourbon. But Charles IX., seeing his mother take 
so many precautions, supposed them to be necessary, and 
wondered to what end she was taking them. He looked 
down ; he hesitated ; his distrust was not to be dispelled by 
words. 

Catherine was astonished to see what deeply founded sus- 
picion lurked in her son’s heart. 

‘‘Well, monsieur,’’ she went on, ‘‘do you not choose to 
understand me? What are we, you and I, compared with the 
eternity of a royal Crown? Do you suspect me of any pur- 
poses but those which must agitate us who dwell in the sphere 
whence empires are governed ?’”’ 

‘¢ Madame,”’ said he, ‘I will follow you to your closet-—we 
must act t 

‘“‘ Act?’’ cried Catherine. ‘‘ Let them go their way and 
take them in the act; the law will rid you of them. For 
God’s sake, monsieur, let them see us smiling.”’ 

* Reign Louis XIII., son of Henry IV. and Marie de’ Medici. 





284 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


The Queen withdrew. The King alone remained standing 
for a minute, for he had sunk into extreme dejection. 

‘¢Qn which side are the snares?’’ he said aloud. ‘Is it 
she who is deceiving me, or they? What is the better policy ? 
Deus ! discerne causam meam,’’ he cried, with tears in his 
eyes. ‘Life isa burden to me. Whether natural or compul- 
sory, I would rather meet death than these contradictory tor- 
ments,’’ he added, and he struck the hammer on his anvil 
with such violence that the vaults of the Louvre quaked. 
‘Great God!’ he exclaimed, going out and looking up at 
the sky, ‘‘ Thou for whose holy religion I am warring, give 
me the clearness of Thine eyes to see into my mother’s heart 
by questioning the Ruggieri.’’ 


The little house inhabited by the Lady of Belleville, where 
Charles had left his prisoners, was the last but one in the Rue 
de |’Autruche, near the Rue Saint-Honoré. The street-gate, 
guarded by two little lodges built of brick, looked very plain 
at a time when gates and all their accessories were so elabo- 
rately treated. The entrance consisted of two stone pillars, 
diamond-cut, and the architrave was graced with the reclin- 
ing figure of a woman holding a cornucopia. The gate, of 
timber covered with heavy iron scroll-work, had a wicket 
peephole at the level of the eye for spying any one who de- 
sired admittance. In each lodge a porter lived, and Charles’ 
caprice insisted that a gatekeeper should be on the watch day 
and night. 

There was a little courtyard in front of the house paved 
with Venetian mosaic. At that time, when carriages had not 
been invented, and ladies rode on horseback or in litters, the 
courtyard could be splendid with no fear of injury from horses 
or vehicles. We must constantly bear these facts in mind to 
understand the narrowness of the streets, the small extent of 
the forecourts, and various other details of the dwellings of 
the fifteenth century. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 285 


The house, of one story above the ground floor, had at the 
top asculptured frieze, on which rested a roof sloping up from 
all the four sides to a flat space at the top. The sides were 
pierced by dormer windows adorned with architraves and 
side-posts, which some great artist had chiseled into delicate 
arabesques. All the three windows of the second-floor rooms 
were equally conspicuous for this embroidery in stone, thrown 
into relief by the red-brick walls. On the ground floor a 
double flight of outside steps, elegantly sculptured—the bal- 
cony being remarkable for a true lover’s knot—led to the 
house-door, decorated in the Venetian style with stone cut 
into pointed lozenges, a form of ornament that was repeated 
on the window-jambs on each side of the door, a fashion then 
much in vogue. 

A garden laid out in the fashion of the time, and full of 
rare flowers, occupied a space behind the house of equal 
extent with the forecourt. A vine hung over the walls. A 
silver pine stood in the centre of a grass-plot; the flower 
borders were divided from the turf by winding paths leading 
to a little bower of clipped yews at the further end. The 
garden walls, covered with a coarse mosaic of colored pebbles, 
pleased the eye by a richness of color that harmonized with 
the hues of the flowers. The garden-front of the house, like 
the front to the court, had a pretty balcony from the middle 
window over the door; and on both facades alike the archi- 
tectural treatment of this middle window was carried up to 
the frieze of the cornice, with a bow that gave it the appear- 
ance of a lantern. The sills of the other windows were inlaid 
with fine marbles let into the stone. 

Notwithstanding the perfect taste evident in this building, 
it had a look of gloom. It was shut out from the open day 
by neighboring houses and the roofs of the Hétel d’Alengon, 
which cast their shadow over the courtyard and garden; 
then absolute silence prevailed. Still, this silence, this sub- 
dued light, this solitude, were restful to a soul that could give 


286 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 


itself up to a single thought, as in a cloister where we may 
meditate, or in a snug home where we may love. 

Who can fail now to conceive of the interior elegance of 
this dwelling, the only spot in all his kingdom where the last 
Valois but one could pour out his heart, confess his sufferings, 
give play to his taste for the arts, and enjoy the poetry he 
loved—pleasures denied him by the cares of his most ponder- 
ous royalty. There alone were his lofty soul and superior 
qualities appreciated; there alone, for a few brief months, 
the last of his life, could he know the joys of fatherhood, to 
which he abandoned himself with the frenzy which his pre- 
sentiment of an imminent and terrible death lent to all his 
actions. 

In the afternoon of this day, Marie was finishing her toilet 
in her oratory—the ladies’ boudoir of that time. She was 
arranging the curls of her fine black hair, so as to leave a few 
locks to turn over a new velvet coif, and was looking atten- 
tively at herself in the mirror. 

“It is nearly four o’clock! That interminable Council 
must be at an end by now,”’ said she to herself. ‘‘ Jacob is 
back from the Louvre, where they are greatly disturbed by 
reason of the number of councilors convened and by the dura- 
tion of the sitting. What can have happened, some disaster ? 
Dear heaven! does he know how the spirit is worn by waiting 
in vain? He is gone hunting, perhaps. If he is amused, all 
is well. If I see him happy, I shall forget my sorrows 

She pulled down her bodice around her waist, that there 
might not be a wrinkle in it, and turned to see how her 
dress fitted in profile; but then she saw the King reclining 
on a couch. The carpeted floors deadened the sound of 
footsteps so effectually that he had come in without being 
heard. 

‘¢ You startled me,’’ she said, with a cry of surprise, which 
she instantly checked. 

** You were thinking of me, then?’’ said the King. 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 287 


‘¢ When am I not thinking of you?’’ she asked him, sitting 
down by his side. 

She took off his cap and cloak, and passed her hands 
through his hair as if to comb it with her fingers. Charles 
submitted without speaking. Marie knelt down to study her 
royal master’s pale face, and discerned in it the lines of 
terrible fatigue and of a more devouring melancholy than 
any she had ever been able to scare away. She checked a 
tear, and kept silence, not to irritate a grief she as yet knew 
nothing of by some ill-chosen word. She did what tender 
wives do in such cases; she kissed the brow seamed with pre- 
cocious wrinkles and the hollow cheeks, trying to breathe the 
freshness of her own spirit into that careworn soul through its 
infusion into gentle caresses, which, however, had no effect. 
She raised her head to the level of the King’s, embracing 
him fondly with her slender arms, and then laid her face 
on his laboring breast, waiting for the opportune moment 
to question the stricken man. 

‘¢ My Charlot, will you not tell your poor anxious friend 
what are the thoughts that darken your brow and take the 
color from your dear, red lips? ”’ 

‘¢ With the exception of Charlemagne,”’ said he, in a dull, 
hollow voice, ‘‘ every King of France of the name of Charles 
has come to a miserable end.”’ . 

“¢Pooh!’’ said she. ‘‘ What of Charles VIII? ’”’ 

‘¢In the prime of life,’’ replied the King, ‘the poor 
man knocked his head against a low doorway in the Castle 
of Amboise, which he was decorating splendidly, and he 
died in dreadful pain.* His death gave the Crown to our 
branch.”’ 

‘¢ Charles VII. reconquered his kingdom.’’ 

‘Child, he died’’—and the King lowered his voice— 
‘¢ of starvation, in the dread of being poisoned bythe Dau- 
phin, who had already caused the death of his fair Agnes. 

* April 7, 1498. 


288 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


The father dreaded his son. Now, the son dreads his 
mother! ’’ 

‘‘ Why look back on the past?’’ said she, remembering 
the terrible existence of Charles VI. 

‘‘Why not, dear heart? Kings need not have recourse to 
diviners to read the fate that awaits them; they have only to 
study history. Iam at this time engaged in trying to escape 
the fate of Charles the Simple, who was bereft of his:crown, 
and died in prison after seven years’ captivity.”’ 

“‘ Charles V. drove out the English!’’ she cried triumph- 
antly. 

‘* Not he, but du Guesclin ; for he, poisoned by Charles of 
Navarre, languished in sickness.”’ 

‘¢ But Charles IV. ?’’ said she. 

‘*He married three times and had no heir, in spite of the 
masculine beauty that distinguished the sons of Philip the 
Handsome. The first Valois dynasty ended in him. The sec- 
ond Valois will end in the same way. The Queen has only 
brought me a daughter, and I shall die without leaving any 
child to come, for a minority would be the greatest misfor- 
tune that could befall the kingdom. Beside, if I had a son, 
would he live? Charles is a name of ill-omen, Charlemagne 
exhausted all the luck attending it. If I could be King of 
France again, I would not be called Charles X.’’ 

‘¢ Who then aims at your crown?”’ 

‘“ My brother d’Alengon is plotting against me. I see ene- 
mies on every side ee 

“‘ Monsieur,’’ said Marie, with an irresistible pout. ‘‘ Tell 
me some merrier tales.”’ 

“* My dearest treasure,’’ said the King vehemently, ‘‘ never 
call me monsieur, even in jest. You remind me of my mother, 
who incessantly offends me with that word. I feel as if she 
deprived me of my crown. She says ‘Myson’ to the Duc 
d’Anjou; that is to say, the King of Poland.” 

‘¢Sire,”’ said Marie, folding her hands as if in prayer, 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 289 


‘there is a realm where you are adored, which your majesty 
fills entirely with glory and strength ; and there the word mon- 
sieur means my gentle lord.”’ 

She unclasped her hands, and with a pretty action pointed 
to her heart. The words were so sweetly musical—musiquées, 
to use an expression of the period, applied to love-songs—that 
Charles took Marie by the waist, raised her with the strength 
for which he was noted, seated her on his knee, and gently 
rubbed his forehead against the curls his mistress had arranged 
with such care. 

Marie thought this a favorable moment ; she ventured on a 
kiss or two, which Charles allowed rather than accepted; then, 
between two kisses, she said— 

‘‘Tf my people told the truth, you were scouring Paris all 
night, as in the days when you played the scapegrace younger 
son ?’? 

‘*Ves,’’ said the King, who sat lost in thought. 

“*Did you not thrash the watch and rob certain good citi- 
~zens? And who are the men placed under my guard, and who 
are such criminals that you have forbidden all communication 
with them? No girl was ever barred in with greater severity 
than these men, who have had neither food nor drink. Solern’s 
Germans have not allowed any one to go near the room where 
you left them. Is it a joke? Or is it aserious matter? ’”’ 

‘¢Yes,’’ said the King, rousing himself from his reverie, 
‘‘last night I went scampering over the roofs with Tavannes 
and the Gondis. I wanted to have the company of my old 
comrades in folly. But our legs are not what they were; we 
did not dare jump across the streets. However, we crossed 
two courtyards by leaping from roof to roof. The last time, 
however, when we alighted on a gable close by this, as we 
clung to the bar of a chimney, we decided, Tavannes and I, 
that we could not doit again. If either of us had been alone, 
he would not have tried it.”’ 

“¢ You were the first to jump, I will wager.’’ 

19 


290 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICi. 


The King smiled. 

‘¢T know why you tisk your life so.’’ 

‘¢ Hah, fair sorceress !’’ 

“‘You are weary of life.’’ 

‘¢ Begone with witchcraft! Iam haunted by it!”’ said the 
King, grave once more. 

‘* My witchcraft is love,’’ said she, with a smile. ‘Since 
the happy day when you first loved me, have I not always 
guessed your thoughts? And if you will suffer me to say so, 
the thoughts that torment you to-day are not worthy of a 
King.”’ 

‘“‘Am Ia King?”’ said he bitterly. 

“Can you not be a King? What did Charles VII. do, 
whose name you bear? He listened to his mistress, my lord, 
and he won back his kingdom, which was invaded by the 
English then as it is now by the adherents of the New Reli- 
gion. Your last act of State opened the road you must follow: 
Exterminate heresy.”’ 

‘‘ You used to blame the stratagem,’’ said Charles, ‘‘ and 
now 7 

“It is accomplished,’’ she putin. ‘‘ Beside, Iam of Madame 
Catherine’s opinion. It was better to do it yourself than to 
leave it to the Guises.’’ 

‘¢ Charles VII. had only men to fight against, but I have to 
battle with ideas,’’ the King went on. ‘‘ You may kill men; 
you cannot kill words? The Emperor Charles V. gave up the 
task ; his son, Don Philip, is spending himself in the attempt. 
We shall die of it, we kings. On whom canI depend? On 
my right, with the Catholics, I find the Guises threatening:me; 
on my left, the Calvinists will never forgive the death of my 
poor Father Coligny, nor the blood-letting of August ; beside, 
they want to be rid of us altogether. And in front of me, my 
mother oe 

‘* Arrest her; reign alone,’’ said Marie, whispering in his 
ear. 











“AM I A KING?” SAID HE, BITTERLY. 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 291 


‘*T wanted to do so yesterday—but Ido not to-day. You 
speak of it lightly enough.’’ 

‘* There is no such great distance between the daughter of 
an apothecary and the daughter of a leech,’’ said Marie 
Touchet, who would often laugh at the parentage falsely 
given her. 

The King knit his brows. 

‘* Marie, take no liberties. Catherine de’ Medici is my 
mother, and you ought to tremble at = 

‘¢ But what are you afraid of ?”’ 

‘¢ Poison !’’ cried the King, beside himself. 

‘*Poor boy!’’ said Marie, swallowing her tears, for so 
much strength united to so much weakness moved her deeply. 
““Oh!’’ she went on, ‘‘ how you make me hate Madame 
Catherine, who used to seem so kind; but her kindness seems 
to be nothing but perfidy. Why does she do me so much 
good and you so much evil? While I was away in Dauphiné 
I heard a great many things about the beginning of your 

‘reign which you had concealed from me; and the Queen 
- your mother seems to have been the cause of all your mis- 
fortunes.”’ 

‘* How ?”’ said the King, with eager interest. 

‘¢ Women whose soul and intentions are pure rule the men 
they love through their virtues ; but women who do not truly 
wish them well find a motive power in their evil inclinations. 
Now the Queen has turned many fine qualities in you into 
vices, and made you believe that your bad ones were virtues. 
Was that acting a mother’s part? Be a tyrant like Louis XI., 
make everybody dreadfully afraid of you, imitate Don Philip, 
banish the Italians, hunt out the Guises, and confiscate the 
estates of the Calvinists; you will rise to stand in solitude, 
and you will save the Crown. The moment is favorable ; 
your brother is in Poland.’’ 

‘¢We are two infants in politics,’’ said Charles bitterly. 
‘‘We only know how to love. Alas! dear heart, yesterday I 





292 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


could think of all this; I longed to achieve great things. 
Puff! my mother has blown down my house of cards. From 
afar difficulties stand out as clearly as mountain peaks. I say 
to myself, ‘I will put an end to Calvinism; I will bring 
Messieurs de Guise to their senses; I will cut adrift from the 
Court of Rome; I will rely wholly on the people of the 
middle-class ;’ in short, at a distance everything looks easy, 
but, when we try to climb the mountains, the nearer we get 
the more obstacles we discern. : 

‘‘ Calvinism in itself is the last thing the party-leaders care 
about ; and the Guises, those frenzied Catholics, would be in 
despair if the Calvinists were really exterminated. Every 
man thinks of his own interests before all else, and religious 
opinions are but a screen for insatiable ambition. Charles 
IX.’s party is the weakest of all; those of the King of 
Navarre, of the King of Poland, of the Duc d’Alengon, of 
the Condés, of the Guises, of my mother, form coalitions 
against each other, leaving me alone even in the Council 
Chamber. In the midst of so many elements of disturbance 
my mother is the stronger, and she has just shown me that 
my plans are inane. We are surrounded by men who defy 
the law. The axe of Louis XI. of which you speak is not in 
our grasp. The Parlement would never sentence the Guises, 
nor the King of Navarre, nor the Condés, nor my brothers. 
It would think it was setting the kingdom in a blaze. What 
is wanted is the courage to command murder; the throne 
must come to that, with these insolent wretches who have 
nullified justice ; but where can I find faithful hands? The 
Council I held this morning disgusted me with everything— 
treachery on all sides, antagonistic interests everywhere ! 

“Tam tired of wearing the crown; all I ask is to die in 
peace.” 

And he sank into gloomy somnolence. 


“‘ Disgusted with everything!’’ echoed Marie Touchet 


sadly, but respecting her lover’s heavy torpor. 
y P § y torp 


er 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 293 


Charles was, in fact, a prey to utter prostration of mind and 
body, resulting from over-fatigue of every faculty, and en- 
hanced by the dejection caused by the vast scale of his mis- 
fortunes and the evident impossibility of overcoming them in 
the face of such a multiplicity of difficulties as genius itself 
takes alarm at. ‘The King’s depression was proportionate to 
the height to which his courage and his ideas had soared 
during the last few months ; and now a fit of nervous melan- 
choly, part, in fact, of his malady, had come over him as he 
left the long sitting of the Council he had held in his closet. 
Marie saw that he was suffering from a crisis when everything 
is irritating and importunate—even love ; so she remained on 
her knees, her head in the King’s lap, as he sat with his fingers 
buried in her hair without moving, without speaking, without 
sighing, and she was equally still. Charles IX. was sunk in 
the lethargy of helplessness; and Marie in the dark despair 
of a loving woman, who can see the border-line ahead where 
love must end. 

Thus the lovers sat for some little time in perfect silence, in 
the mood when every thought is a wound, when the clouds 
of a mental storm hide even the remembrance of past hap- 
piness. 

Marie believed herself to be in some sort to blame for this 
terrible dejection. She wondered, not without alarm, whether 
the King’s extravagant joy at welcoming her back, and the 
vehement passion she could not contend with, were not help- 
ing to wreck his mind and frame. As she looked up at her 
lover, her eyes streaming with tears that bathed her face, she 
saw tears in his eyes too and on his colorless cheeks. This 
sympathy, uniting them even in sorrow, touched Charles IX. 
so deeply that he started up like a horse that feels the spur. 
He put his arm around Marie’s waist, and before she knew 
what he was doing had drawn her down on to the sumptuous 
couch. 

‘¢T will be King no more!”’ he said. ‘I will be nothing 


294 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


but your lover, and forget everything in that joy. I will die 
happy and not eaten up with the cares of a throne.’’ 

The tone in which he spoke, the fire that blazed in eyes 
just now so dull, instead of pleasing Marie, gave her a terrible 
pang; at that moment she blamed her love for contributing 
to the illness of which the King was dying. 

‘¢ You forget your prisoners,’’ said she, starting up suddenly. 

‘What doI care about the men? They have my permis- 
sion to kill me.’’ 

‘‘What? Assassins!’’ said she. 

** Do not be uneasy, we have them safe, dear child. Now, 
think not of them, but of me. Say, do you not love me?” 
he inquired. 

‘¢ Sire !’’ she cried. 

‘*Sire!’’ he repeated, flashing sparks from his eyes, so 
violent was his first surge of fury at his mistress’ ill-timed 
deference. ‘‘ You are in collusion with my mother.’’ 

‘¢Great God!’’ cried Marie, turning to the picture over 
her praying-chair, and trying to get to it to put up a prayer. 
‘*Oh! make him understand me!”’ 

‘‘What!’’ said the King sternly. ‘‘ Have you any sin on 
your soul ?”’ 

And still holding her in his arms, he looked deep into her 
eyes. ‘I have heard of the mad passion of one d’Entragues 
for you,’’ he went on, looking wildly at her, ‘and since 
their grandfather, Capitaine Balzac, married a Visconti of 
Milan, those rascals hesitate at nothing.’’ 

Marie gave the King such a look of pride that he was 
ashamed. Just then the cry was heard of the infant Charles 
de Valois from the adjoining room ; he was just awake, and 
his nurse was no doubt bringing him to his mother. 

‘*Come in, la Bourguignonne,’’ said Marie, taking the 
child from his nurse and bringing him to the King. ‘‘ You 
are more of a child than he,”’ said she, half angry, but half 
appeased. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 295 


“* He is a fine boy,’’ said Charles IX., taking his son in his 
arms. 

‘‘No one but me can know how like you he is,’’ said 
Marie. ‘‘ He has your smile and ways already.’’ 

‘* What, so young ?’’ said the King, smiling. 

‘*Men will never believe such things,’’ said she; ‘ but 
look, my Charlot, play with him, look at him—now, am I 
not right ?”’ 

“¢It is true,’’ said the King, startled by a movement on 
the infant’s part, which struck him as the miniature reproduc- 
tion of a trick of his own. 

‘Pretty flower!’’ said his mother. ‘‘ He will never go 
away from me; he will never make me unhappy.”’ 

The King played with the child, tossing it, kissing it with 
entire devotion, speaking to it in those vague and foolish 
words, the onomatopceia of mothers and nurses; his voice 
was childlike, his brow cleared, joy came back to his sad- 
dened countenance ; and when Marie saw that her lover had 
forgotten everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and 
whispered in his ear— 

‘© Will you not tell me, my Charlot, why you put assassins 
in my keeping, and who these men are, and what you intend 
to do with them? And whither were you going across the 
roofs? I hope there was no woman in the case.’’ 

‘‘Then you still love me so well?’’ said the King, caught 
by the bright flash of one of those questioning looks which 
women can give at a critical moment. 

“You could doubt me?’’ asked she, as the tears gathered 
under her beautiful girlish eyelids. 

‘¢There are women in my adventure, but they are witches. 
Where was I?”’ 

‘‘ We were quite near here, on the gable of a house,”’ said 
Marie. ‘‘ In what street ?’’ 

‘¢In the Rue Saint-Honoré, my jewel,’’ said the King, who 
seemed to have recovered himself, and who, as he recalled his 


296 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


ideas, wanted to give his mistress some notion of the scene 
that was about to take place here. ‘‘ As I crossed it in pur- 
suit of some sport, my eyes were attracted by a bright light in 
a top window of the house inhabited by René, my mother’s 
perfumer and glover—yours too, the whole Court’s. I have 
strong suspicions as to what goes on in that man’s house, and 
if I am poisoned that is where the poison is prepared.”’ 

‘«¢T give him up to-morrow,”’ said Marie. 

‘‘What, you have still dealt with him since I left him?” 
said the King. ‘‘ My life was here,’”’ he added gloomily, 
‘¢and here no doubt they have arranged for my death.”’ 

<¢ But, my dear boy, I have just come home from Dauphiné 
with our Dauphin,”’ said she, with a smile, ‘‘and I have bought 
nothing of René since the Queen of Navarre died. Well, go 
on; you climbed up to René’s roof——?”’ 

‘‘Yes,’’ the King went on. ‘‘In a moment I, followed by 
Tavannes, had reached a spot whence, without being seen, I 
could see into the devil’s kitchen, and note certain things 
which led me to take strong measures. Do you ever happen 
to have noticed the attics that crown that damned Florentine’s 
house? All the windows to the street are constantly kept 
shut excepting the last, from which the Hétel de Soissons can 
be seen, and the column my mother had erected for her 
astrologer, Cosmo Ruggieri. There is a room in this top story 
with a corridor lighted from the inner yard, so that, in order 
‘to see what is being done within, a man must get to a perch 
which no one would ever think of climbing, the coping of a 
high wall which ends against the roof of René’s house. The 
creatures who placed the alembics there to distill death trusted 
to the faint hearts of the Parisians to escape inspection ; but 
they counted without their Charles de Valois. I crept along 
the gutter, and supported myself against the window-jamb with 
my arm round the neck of a monkey that is sculptured on it.”’ 

“¢ And what did you see, dear heart ?’’ said Marie, in alarm. 

‘¢ A low room where deeds of darkness are plotted,’’ replied 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 297 


the King. ‘‘ The first thing on which my eyes fell was a tall, 
old man seated in a chair, with a magnificent beard like old 
l’H6pital’s, and dressed, like him, in black velvet. The con- 
centrated rays of a brightly burning lamp fell on his high 
forehead, deeply furrowed by hollow lines, on a crown of 
white hair and a calm, thoughtful face, pale with vigils and 
study. His attention was divided between a manuscript on 
parchment several centuries old and two lighted stoves on 
which some heretical mixtures were cooking. Neither the 
floor nor the ceiling was visible; they were so covered with 
animals hung up there, skeletons, dried herbs, minerals, and 
drugs, with which the place was stuffed; here some books 
and retorts, with chests’ full of instruments for magic and 
astrology ; there diagrams for horoscopes, phials, wax-figures, 
and, perhaps, the poisons he concocts for René in payment for 
the shelter and hospitality bestowed on him by my mother’s 
glover. 

‘¢ Tavannes and I were startled, I can tell you, at the sight 
of this diabolical arsenal; for merely at the sight of it one 
feels spellbound, and but that my business is to be King of 
France, I should have been frightened. ‘Tremble for us 
both,’ said I to Tavannes. 

‘¢ But Tavannes’ eyes were riveted on the most mysterious 
object. On a couch by the old man’s side lay a girl at full 
length, of the strangest beauty, as long and slender as a snake, 
as white as an ermine, as pale as death, as motionless as a 
statue. Perhaps it was a woman just dug out of her grave, for 
she seemed to be still wrapped in her shroud ; her eyes were 
fixed, and I could not see her breathe. The old wretch paid 
no sort of heed to her. I watched him so curiously that his 
spirit I believe passed into me. By dint of studying him, at 
last I admired that searching eye, keen and bold, in spite of the 
chills of age ; that mouth, mobile with thoughts that came from 
what seemed a single fixed desire, graven in a myriad wrinkles. 
Everything in the man spoke of a hope Which nothing can 


298 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


discourage and nothing dismay. His attitude, motionless but 
full of thrilling life, his features so chiseled, so deeply cut by 
a passion that has done the work of the sculptor’s tool, that 
mind dead-set on some criminal or scientific purpose, that 
searching intelligence on the track of nature though con- 
quered by her, and bent, without having broken, under the 
burden of an enterprise it will never give up, threatening cre- 
ation with fire borrowed from itself. I was fascinated for 
a moment, 

‘¢ That old man was more a king than I, for his eye saw the 
whole world and was its master. I am determined to temper 
no more swords; I want to float over abysses, as that old man 
does; his science seems to me a sovereignty. In short, I be- 
lieve in these occult sciences.” 

‘You, the eldest son, and the defender of the Holy Catho- 
lic, Apostolic, and Roman Church!”’ cried Marie. 

an Bee 

‘‘ Why, what has come over you? Go on; I will be fright- 
ened for you, and you shall be brave for me.”’ 

‘¢The old man looked at the clock and rose,’’ the King 
went on. ‘He left the room, how I could not see, but I 
heard him open the window toward the Rue Saint-Honoré. 
Presently a light shone out, and then I saw another light, an- 
swering to the old man’s, by which we could perceive Cosmo 
Ruggieri on the top of the column. 

‘*¢Qh, ho! They understand each other,’ said I to Ta- 
vannes, who at once thought the whole affair highly suspicious, 
and was quite of my opinion that we should seize these two 
men, and at once make a search in their abominable work- 
shop. But, before proceeding to a raid, we wanted to see 
what would happen. By the end of a quarter of an hour the 
door of the laboratory opened, and Cosmo Ruggieri, my 
mother’s adviser—the bottomless pit in which all the Court 
secrets are buried, of whom wives crave help against their 
husbands and their lovers, and husbands and lovers take 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 299 


counsel against faithless women, who gains money out of the 
past and the future, taking it from every one, who sells horo- 
scopes, and is supposed to know everything—that half-demon 
came in, saying to the majestic-looking old man, ‘ Good- 
evening, brother.’ 

‘¢ He had with him a horrible little old woman, toothless, 
hunchbacked, crooked, and bent like a lady’s marmoset, but 
far more hideous ; she was wrinkled like a withered apple, her 
skin was of the color of saffron, her chin met her nose, her 
mouth was a hardly visible slit, her eyes were like the black 
spots of the deuce on dice, her brow expressed a bitter temper, 
her hair fell in gray locks from under a dirty coif; she 
walked with a crutch; she stank of devilry and the stake ; 
and she frightened us; for neither Tavannes nor I believed 
that she was a real woman; God never made one so horrible 
as her. 

‘She sat down on a stool by the side of the fair white ser- 
pent with whom Tavannes was falling in love. 

‘‘The two brothers paid no heed to either the old woman 
or the young one, who, side by side, formed a horrible con- 
trast. On one hand life in death, on the other death in life.” 

‘¢ My sweet poet!’’ cried Marie, kissing the King. 

“¢ ¢Good-evening, Cosmo,’ the old alchemist replied. And 
then both looked at the stove. ‘What is the power of the 
moon to-night?’ the old man asked Cosmo. ‘Why, dear 
Lorenzo,’ my mother’s astrologer replied, ‘the high tides of 
September are not yet over ; it is impossible to read anything 
in the midst of such confusion.’ ‘And what did the Orient 
say this evening?’ ‘He has just discovered,’ said Cosmo, 
‘that there is a creative force in the air which gives back to 
the earth all it takes from it; he concludes, with us, that 
everything in this world is the outcome of a slow transfor- 
mation, but all the various forms are of one and the same 
matter.’ ‘That is what my predecessor thought,’ said Lorenzo. 
‘This morning Bernard Palissy was telling me that the metals 


300 | ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


are a result of compression, and that fire, which parts all 
things, joins all things also; fire has the power of compress- 
ing as well as that of diffusing. That worthy has a spark of 
genius in him.’ 

‘Though I was placed where I could not be seen, Cosmo 
went up to the dead girl, and, taking her hand, said, ‘ There 
is some one near! Whoisit?’ ‘The King,’ said she, very 
promptly. 

‘‘T at once showed myself, knocking on the window-pane ; 
Ruggieri opened the window and I jumped into this wizard’s 
kitchen, followed by Tavannes. 

‘** Ves, the King,’ said I to the two Florentines, who 
seemed terror-stricken. ‘In spite of your furnaces and books, 
your witches and your learning, you could not divine my visit. 
I am delighted to see the famous Lorenzo Ruggieri, of whom 
the Queen my mother speaks with such mystery,’ said I to the 
old man, who rose and bowed. ‘You are in this kingdom 
without my consent, my good man. Whom are you working 
for here, you, who from father to son have dwelt in the heart 
of the House of the Medici? Listen tome. You have your 
hand in so many purses that the most covetous would by this 
have had their fill of gold; you are far too cunning to plunge 
unadvisedly into criminal courses, but you ought not either to 
rush like feather-brains into this kitchen ; you must have some 
secret schemes, you who are not content with gold or with 
power? Whom do you serve, God or the devil? What are 
you concocting here? I insist on the whole truth. I am 
honest man enough to hear and keep the secret of your under- 
takings, however blamable they may be. So tell me every- 
thing without concealment. If you deceive me, you will be 
sternly dealt with. But Pagan or Christian, Calvinist or Mo- 
hammedan, you have my royal word for it that you may leave 
the ccuntry unpunished, even if you have some peccadilloes to 
confess. At any rate, I give you the remainder of this night 
and to-morrow morning to examine your consciences, for you 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 301 


are my prisoners, and you must now follow me to a place 
where you will be guarded like a treasure.’ 

‘*Before yielding to my authority, the two Florentines 
glanced at each other with a wily eye, and Lorenzo Ruggieri 
replied that I might be certain that no torture would wring 
their secrets from them; that in spite of their frail appear- 
ance, neither pain nor human feeling had any hold on them. 
Confidence alone could win from their lips what their mind 
had in its keeping. I was not to be surprised if at that mo- 
ment they treated on an equal footing with a King who 
acknowledged no one above him but God, for that their ideas 
also came from God alone. Hence they demanded of me 
such confidence as they would grant. So, before pledging 
themselves to answer my questions without reserve, they de- 
sired me to place my left hand in the young girl’s and my 
right hand in the old woman’s. Not choosing to let them 
suppose that I feared any devilry, I put out my hands. Lo- 
renzo took the right and Cosmo the left, and each placed one 
in the hand of a woman, so there I was like Jesus Christ be- 
tween the two thieves. All the time the two witches were 
studying my hands, Cosmo held a mirror before me, desiring 
me to look at myself, while his brother talked to the two 
women in an unknown tongue. Neither Tavannes nor I 
could catch the meaning of a single sentence. 

‘We set seals on every entrance to this laboratory before 
bringing away the men, and Tavannes undertook to keep 
guard till Bernard Palissy and Chapelain, my physician-in- 
chief, shall go there to make a close examination of all the 
drugs stored or made there. It was to hinder their knowing 
anything of the search going on in their kitchen, and to pre- 
vent their communicating with any one whatever outside—for 
they might have sent some message to my mother—that I 
brought these two demons to be shut up here with Solern’s 
Germans to watch them, who are as good as the stoutest 
prison-walls. René himself is confined to his room under the 


302 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


eye of Solern’s groom, and the two witches also. And now, 
sweetheart, as I hold the key of the Cabala, the kings of 
Thunes, the chiefs of witchcraft, the princes of Bohemia, the 
masters of the future, the inheritors of all the famous sooth- 
sayers, I will read and know your heart, and at last we will 
know what is to become of us.”’ 

‘¢T shall be very glad if they can lay my heart bare,’’ said 
Marie, without showing the least alarm. 

*‘T know why necromancers do not frighten you; you cast 
spells yourself.’’ 

‘¢ Will you not have some of these peaches ?”’ said she, of- 
fering him some fine fruit on a silver-gilt plate. ‘‘ Look at 
these grapes and pears; I went myself to gather them all at 
Vincennes.” 

‘* Then I will eat some, for there can be no poison in them 
but the philters distilled from your fingers.”’ 

“You ought to eat much fruit, Charles; it would cool your 
blood, which you scorch by such violent living.’’ 

** And ought I not to love you less, too? ’”’ 

** Perhaps ’? said she. ‘If what you love is bad for 
you—and I have often thought so—I should find power in my 
love to refuse to let you have it. I adore Charles far more 
than I love the King, and I want the man to live without the 
troubles that make him sad and anxious.”’ 

“* Royalty is destroying me.’’ 

“<TIt is so,’’ replied she. ‘‘If you were only a poor prince 
like your brother-in-law the King of Navarre, that wretched 
debauchee who has not asou or a stitch of his own, who has 
merely a poor little kingdom in Spain where he will never set 
foot, and Béarn in France, which yields him scarcely enough 
to live on, I should be happy, much happier than if I were 
really Queen of France.’’ 

‘‘But are you not much more than the Queen? King 
Charles is hers only for the benefit of the kingdom, for the 
Queen, after all, is part of our politics.”’ 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 303 


Marie smiled with a pretty little pout, saying— 

“¢ We all know that, my liege. And my sonnet—is it fin- 
ished ?”’ 

‘*Dear child, it is as hard to write verses as to draw up an 
edict of pacification. I will finish them for you soon. Ah 
God ! life sits lightly on me here; would I could never leave 
you! But I must, nevertheless, examine the two Florentines. 
By all the sacred relics, I thought one Ruggieri quite enough 
in France, and behold there are two! Listen, my dearest 
heart, you have good mother-wit, you would make a capital 
lieutenant of police, for you detect everything a 

‘¢ Well, Sire, we women take all we dread for granted, and 
to us what is probable is certain; there is all our subtlety in 
two words.”’ 

‘* Well, then, help me to fathom these two men. At this 
moment every determination I may come to depends on this 
examination. Are they innocent? Are they guilty? Behind 
them stands my mother.”’ 

‘‘T hear Jacob on the winding stair,’’ said Marie. 

Jacob was the King’s favorite body-servant, who accompa- 
nied him in all his amusements ; he now came to ask whether 
his master would wish to speak with the two prisoners. 

At a nod of consent, the mistress of the house gave some 
orders. 

“¢ Jacob,’’ said she, ‘‘ make every one in the place leave the 
house, except the nurse and Monsieur le Dauphin d’ Auvergne 
—they may stay. Do you remain in the room downstairs ; 
but first of all shut the windows, draw the curtains, and light 
the candles.’ 

The King’s impatience was so great that, while these prepa- 
rations were being made, he came to take his place on a large 
settle, and his pretty mistress seated herself by his side in the 
nook of a wide, white marble chimney-place, where a bright 
fire blazed on the hearth. In the place of a mirror hung a 
portrait of the King, in a red velvet frame. Charles rested 





304 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


his elbow on the arm of the seat, to contemplate the two 
Italians at his ease. 

The shutters closed, and the curtains drawn, Jacob lighted 
the candles in a sort of candelabrum of chased silver, placing 
it on a table at which the two Florentines took their stand— 
seeming to recognize the candlestick as the work of their 
fellow-townsman, Benvenuto Cellini. Then the effect of this 
rich room, decorated in the King’s taste, was really brilliant. 
The russet tone of the tapestries looked better than by day- 
light. The furniture, elegantly carved, reflected the light of 
the candles and of the fire in its shining bosses. The gilding, 
_ judiciously introduced, sparkled here and there like eyes, and 
gave relief to the brown coloring that predominated in this 
nest for lovers. 

Jacob knocked twice, and at a word brought in the two 
Florentines. Marie Touchet was immediately struck by the 
grand presence which distinguished Lorenzo in the sight of 
great and small alike. This austere and venerable man, whose 
silver beard was relieved against an overcoat of black velvet, 
had a forehead like a marble dome. His severe countenance, 
with two black eyes that darted points of fire, inspired a thrill 
as of a genius emerged from the deepest solitude, and all the 
more impressive because its power was not dulled by contact 
with other men. It was as the steel of a blade that has not 
yet been used. 

Cosmo Ruggieri wore the Court dress of the period. 
Marie nodded to the King, to show him that he had not 
exaggerated the picture, and to thank him for introducing her 
to this extraordinary man. ‘‘I should have liked to see the 
witches, too,’’ she whispered. 

Charles IX., sunk again in brooding, made no reply; he 
was anxiously flipping off some crumbs of bread that happened 
to lie on his doublet and hose. 

‘*Your science cannot work on the sky, nor compel the 
sun to shine, Messieurs de Florence,’’ said the King, pointing 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 305 


to the curtains which had been drawn to shut out the gray 
mist of Paris. ‘‘ There is no daylight.” 

‘* Our science, Sire, enables us to make a sky as we will,’’ 
said Lorenzo Ruggieri. ‘‘The weather is always fair for 
those who work in a laboratory by the light of a furnace.’’ 

“That is true,’’ said the King. ‘*‘ Well, father,’’ said he, 
using a word he was accustomed to employ to old men, 
‘* explain to us very clearly the object of your studies.’’ 

‘Who will guarantee us impunity ?”’ 

«The word of a King!” replied Charles, whose curiosity 
was greatly excited by this question. 

Lorenzo Ruggieri seemed to hesitate, and Charles ex- 
claimed— 

‘¢ What checks you? we are alone.”’ 

**Ts the King of France here ?’’ asked the old man. 

Charles IX. reflected for a moment, then he replied, 
<oNo’ 

** But will he not come?’’ Lorenzo urged. 

‘* No,” replied Charles, restraining an impluse of rage. 

The imposing old man took a chair and sat down. Cosmo, 
amazed at his boldness, dared not imitate his brother. 

Charles IX. said, with severe irony— 

‘‘The King is not here, monsieur, but you are in the 
presetice of a lady for whose permission you ought to wait.” 

‘*The man you see before you, madame,”’ said the grand 
old man, ‘‘is as far above kings as kings are above their 
subjects, and you shall find me courteous, even when you 
know my power.”’ 

Hearing these bold words, spoken with Italian emphasis, 
Charles and Marie looked at each other and then at Cosmo, 
who, with his eyes fixed on his brother, seemed to be asking 
himself, ‘‘How will he get himself out of the awkward 
position we are inP”’ 

In fact, one person only could appreciate the dignity and 
skill of Lorenzo Ruggieri’s first move ; not the King, nor his 

20 


306 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


young mistress, over whom the elder man had cast the spell 
of his audacity, but his not less wily brother Cosmo. Though 
he was superior to the cleverest men at Court, and perhaps 
to his patroness Catherine de’ Medici, the astrologer knew 
Lorenzo to be his master. 

The learned old man, buried in solitude, had gauged the 
sovereigns of the earth, almost all of them wearied out by 
the perpetual shifting of politics ; for at that time great crises 
were so sudden, so far reaching, so fierce, and so unexpected ! 
He knew their satiety, their lassitude; he knew with what 
eagerness they pursued all that was new, strange, or uncommon; 
and, above all, how glad they were to rise now and then to 
intellectual regions so as to escape from the perpetual struggle 
with men and things. To those who have exhausted politics, 
nothing remains but abstract thought; this Charles V. had 
proved by his abdication. 

Charles IX., who made sonnets and swords to recreate him- 
self after the absorbing business of an age when the Throne 
was in not less ill-odor than the King, and when royalty had 
only its.cares and none of its pleasures, could not but be 
strangely startled by Lorenzo’s audacious negation of his 
power. Religious impiety had ceased to be surprising at a 
time when Catholicism was closely inquired into; but the 
subversion of all religion, assumed as a groundwork for the 
wild speculations of mystical arts, naturally amazed the King 
and roused him from his gloomy absence of mind. Beside, a 
victory to be won over mankind was an undertaking which 
would make every other interest seem trivial in the eyes of the 
Ruggieri. An important debt to be paid depended on this 

_idea to be suggested to the King; the brothers could not ask 
for this, and yet they must obtain it. ‘The first thing was to 
make Charles IX. forget his suspicions by making him jump 
at some new idea, 

The two Italians knew full well that in this strange game 
their lives were at stake ; and the glances—deferent but proud 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 307 


—that they exchanged with Marie and the King, whose looks 
were keen and suspicious, were a drama in themselves. 

‘«Sire,’’ said Lorenzo Ruggieri, ‘‘ you have asked for the 
truth. But to show her to you naked, I must bid you sound 
the well, the pit, from which she will rise. I pray you let the 
gentleman, the poet, forgive us for saying what the Eldest 
Son of the Church* may regard as blasphemy—I do not be- 
lieve that God troubles Himself about human affairs.’’ 

Though fully resolved to preserve his sovereign indifference, 
Charles IX. could not control a gesture of surprise. 

‘* But for that conviction, I should have no faith in the 
miraculous work to which I have devoted myself. But, to 
carry it out, I must believe it ; and if the hand of God rules 
all things, [am a madman. _ So, be it known to the King, we 
aim at winning a victory over the immediate course of human 
nature. 

“IT am an alchemist, Sire; but do not suppose, with the 
vulgar, that Lam striving to make gold. The composition of 
gold is not the end, but only an incident of our researches ; 
else we should not call our undertaking magnum opus, the 
great work. The great work is something far more ambi- 
tious than that. If I, at this day, could recognize the pres- 
ence of God in matter, the fire of the furnaces that have 
been burning for centuries would be extinguished to-morrow 
at my bidding. 

‘‘But make no mistake—to deny the direct interference of 
God is not to deny God. We place the Creator of all things 
far above the level to which religions reduce Him. Those 
who hope for immortality are not to be accused of atheism. 
Following the example of Lucifer, we are jealous of God, and 
jealousy is a proof of violent love. ‘Though this doctrine lies 
at the root of our labors, all adepts do not accept it. Cosmo,’’ 
said the old man, indicating his brother, ‘‘ Cosmo is devout ; 
he pays for masses for the repose of our father’s soul, and he 

* A title of the Kings of France. ; 


308 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI, 


goes to hear them. Your mother’s astrologer believes in the 
divinity of Christ, in the immaculate conception, and in tran- 
substantiation ; he believes in the Pope’s indulgences, and in 
hell—he believes in an infinite number of things. His hour 
is not yet come, for I have read his horoscope; he will live to 
be nearly a hundred. He will live through two reigns, and 
see two kings of France assassinated 

‘“¢ Who.will be ?’’ asked the King. 

‘¢The last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons,’’ 
replied Lorenzo. ‘*But Cosmo will come to my way of 
thinking. In fact, it is impossible to be an alchemist and 
a Catholic ; to believe in the dominion of man over matter, 
and in the supreme power of mind.” 

«¢ Cosmo will live to be a hundred ?”’ said the King, knit- 
ting his brows in the terrible way that was his wont. 

“Yes, Sire,’’ said Lorenzo decisively. ‘* He will die peace- 
fully in his bed.”’ 

‘‘If it is in your power to predict the moment of your 
death, how can you be ignorant of the result of your in- 
quiries?’’ asked the King. And he smiled triumphantly as 
he looked at Marie Touchet. 

The brothers exchanged a swift look of satisfaction. _ 

‘‘He is interested in alchemy,’’ thought they, ‘‘so we are 
safe.” 

‘Our prognostics are based on the existing relations of 
man to nature; but the very point we aim at is the complete 
alteration of those relations,’’ replied Lorenzo. 

The King sat thinking. 

‘‘But if you are sure that you must die, you are assured of 
defeat,’’ said Charles IX. 

‘* As our predecessors were,’’ replied Lorenzo, lifting his 
hand and letting it drop with a solemn and emphatic gesture, 
as dignified as his thoughts. ‘‘ But your mind has rushed on 
to the goal of our attempt, Sire; we must come back again, 
Sire! Unless you know the ground on which our edifice is 








? 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 309 


erected, you may persist in saying that it will fall, and judge 
this science, which has been pursued for centuries by the 
greatest minds, as the vulgar judge it.’’ 

The King bowed assent. 

‘**T believe, then, that this earth belongs to man, that he 
is master of it, and may appropriate all the forces, all the 
elements thereof. Man is not a creature proceeding directly 
from the hand of God, but the result of the principle diffused 
throughout the infinite ether, wherein myriads. of beings are 
produced ; and these have no resemblance to each other be- 
tween star and star, because the conditions of life are every- 
where different. Ay, my liege, the motion we call life has its 
source beyond all visible worlds; creation draws from it as 
the surrounding conditions may require, and the minutest 
beings share in it by taking all they are able, at their own 
risk and peril; it is their part to defend themselves from 
death. This is the sum-total of alchemy. 

‘‘Tf man, the most perfect animal on this globe, had within 
‘him a fraction of the Godhead, he could not perish—but he 
does perish. To escape from this dilemma, Socrates and his 
school invented the soul. I—the successor of the great un- 
known kings who have ruled this science—I am for the old 
theories against the new; I believe in the transmutation of 
matter which I can see, as against the eternity of a soul which 
I cannot see. I do not acknowledge the world of souls. If 
such a world existed, the substances of which the beautiful 
combination, produces your body—and which in madame are 
so dazzling—would not separate and resolve themselves after 
your death to return each to its own place ; the water to water, 
the fire to fire, the metal to metal, just as when my charcoal 
is burnt its elements are restored to their original molecules. 

‘¢ Though you say that something lives on, it is not we our- 
selves ; all that constitutes our living self perishes. 

‘¢ Now, it is my living self that I desire to perpetuate be- 
yond the common term of life; it is the present manifestation 


310 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


for which I want to secure longer duration. What! trees live 
for centuries, and men shall live but for years, while those are 
passive and we are active; while they are motionless and 
speechless, and we walk and talk! No creature on earth 
ought to be superior to us either in power or permanency. 
We have already expanded our senses; we can see into the 
stars. We ought to be able to extend our life. I place life 
above power. Of what use is power if life slips from us? 

‘‘A rational man ought to have no occupation but that of 
seeking—not whether there is another life—but the secret on 
which our present life is based, so as to be able to prolong it 
at will! This is the desire that has silvered my hair. But I 
walk on boldly in the darkness, leading to battle those intel- 
lects which share my faith. Life will some day be ours.’’ 

‘‘But how ?”’ cried the King, starting to his feet. 

‘*The first condition of our faith is the belief that this 
world is for man; you must grant me that,’’ said Lorenzo. 

‘Well and good, so be it!’’ said Charles de Valois, im- 
patient, but already fascinated. 

‘Well, then, Sire, if we remove God from this world, what 
is left but man? Now let us survey our domain. The 
material world is composed of elements; those elements have 
a first principle within them. All these principles resolve 
themselves into one which is gifted with motion. The num- 
ber three is the formula of creation: Matter, Motion, Pro- 
duction !”’ 

“« Proof, proof? Pause there! ’’ cried the King. 

‘‘Do you not see the effects?’’ replied Lorenzo. ‘‘We 
have analyzed in our crucibles the acorn from which an oak 
would have risen as well as the embryo which would have be- 
come a man; from these small masses of matter a pure ele- 
ment was derived to which some force, some motion would 
have been added. In the absence of a Creator, must not 
that first principle be able to assume the external forms which 
constitute our world? For the phenomena of life are every- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 311 


where the same. Yes, in metals, as in living beings, in plants 
as in man, life begins by an imperceptible embryo which de- 
velops spontaneously. ‘There is a first principle! We must 
detect it at the point where it acts on itself, where it is one, 
where it is a principle before it is a creature, a cause before it 
is an effect ; then we shall see it absolute—formless, but capa- 
ble of assuming all the forms we see it take. 

‘«¢ When we are face to face with this particle or atom, and 
have detected its motion from the starting-point, we shall 
know its laws; we are thenceforth its masters and able to 
impose on it the form we may choose, among all we see; we 
shall possess gold, having the world, and can give ourselves 
centuries of life to enjoy our wealth. That is what we seek, 
my disciples and I. All our powers, all our thoughts are 
directed to that search; nothing diverts us from it. One hour 
wasted on any other passion would be stolen from our great. 
ness! You have never found one of your hunting-dogs 
neglectful of the game or the death, and I have never known 
“one of my persevering subjects diverted by a woman or a 
thought of greed. 

‘‘If the adept craves for gold and power, that hunger 
comes of our necessities; he clutches at fortune as a thirsty 
hound snatches a moment from the chase to drink, because 
his retorts demand a diamond to consume or ingots to be re- 
duced to powder. Each one has his line of work. This one 
seeks the secret of vegetable nature, he studies the torpid life 
of plants, he notes the parity of motion in every species and 
the parity of nutrition ; in every case he discerns that sun, 
air, and water are needed for fertility and nourishment. 
Another investigates the blood of animals. A third studies 
the laws of motion generally and its relation to the orbits of 
the stars. Almost all love to struggle with the intractable 
nature of metals; for though we find various elements in 
everything, we always find metals the same throughout, down 
to their minutest particles. 


312 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’. MEDICI. 


‘¢ Hence the common error as to our labors. Do you see 
all these patient toilers, these indefatigable athletes, always 
vanquished, and always returning to the assault? Humanity, 
Sire, is at our heels, as your huntsman is at the heels of the 
pack. It cries to us, ‘Hurryon! Overlook nothing! Sac- 
rifice everything, even a man—you who sacrifice yourselves ! 
Hurry onward! Cut off the head and hands of Death, my 
foe.’ 

‘Yes, Sire, we are animated by a sentiment on which de- 
pends the happiness of generations to come. We have buried 
many men—and what men !—who have died in the pursuit. 
When we set foot on that road it is not to work for ourselves: 
we may perish without discovering the secret. And what a 
death is that of a man who does not believe in a future life! 
We are glorious martyrs; we bear the selfishness of the whole 
race in our hearts ; we live in our successors. On our way 
we discover secrets which enrich the mechanical and liberal 
arts. Our furnaces shed gleams of light which help society 
to possess more perfect forms of industry. Gunpowder was 
discovered in our retorts; we shall conquer the thunder yet. 
Our patient vigils may overthrow politics.’’ 

‘Can that be possible ?’’ cried the King, sitting up again 
on the settle. 

“‘Why not?” replied the Grand Master of the New Tem- 
plars. ‘‘ Zradidit mundum disputationibus! (God has given 
us the world.) Listen to this once again! Man is lord on 
earth, and matter is his. Every means, every power is at his 
service. What created us? A motion. What power keeps 
life in us? A motion. And should not science grasp this 
motion? Nothing on earth is lost, nothing flies off from our 
planet to go elsewhere ; if it were so, the stars would fall on 
one another. ‘The waters of the Deluge are all here, and not 
a drop lost. Around us, above, below, are the elements 
whence have proceeded the innumerable millions of men who 
have trodden the earth, before and since the Deluge. What 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 313 


is it that remains to be done? To detect the disintegrating 
force; on the other hand, to discover the combining force. 
We are the outcome of a visible toil. When the waters cov- 
ered our globe, men came forth from them who found the 
elements of life in the earth’s covering, in the atmosphere, 
and in food. Earth and air, then, contain the first principle 
of human transformations ; these go on under our eyes, by 
the agency of what is under our eyes ; hence we can discover 
the secret by not confining our efforts to the span of one 
man’s life, but making the task endure as long as mankind 
itself. We have, in fact, attacked matter as a whole; Mat- 
ter, in which I believe, and which I, Grand Master of our 
Order, am bent on penetrating. 

‘¢ Christopher Columbus gave a world to the King of Spain ; 
I am seeking to give the King of France a people that shall 
never die. I, an outpost on the remotest frontier which cuts 
us off from the knowledge of things, a patient student of 
atoms, I destroy forms, I dissolve the bonds of every com- 
bination, I imitate Death to enable me to imitate Life. In 
short, I knock incessantly-at the door of Creation, and shall 
still knock till my latest day. When I die, my knocker will 
pass into other hands not less indefatigable, as unknown giants 
bequeathed it to me. 

‘¢ Fabulous images, never understood, such as those of Pro- 
metheus, of Ixion, of Adonis, of Pan, etc., which are part of 
the religious beliefs of every people and in every age, show us 
that this hope had its birth with the human race. Chaldza, 
India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and the Moors have transmitted 
Magian lore, the highest of all the occult sciences, the store- 
house of the results of generations of watchers. ‘Therein lay 
the bond of the noble and majestic Order of the Temple. 
When he burned the Templars, a predecessor of yours, Sire, 
only burned men; their secrets remain with us. The recon- 
struction of the Temple is the watchword of an unrecognized 
people, a race of intrepid seekers, all looking to the Orient 


314 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


of life, all brethren, all inseparable, united by an idea, stamped 
with the seal of toil. I am the sovereign of this people, their 
chief by election and not by birth. I guide them all toward 
the essence of life! Grand Master, Rosicrucians, compan- 
ions, adepts, we all pursue the invisible molecule which escapes 
our crucibles, and still evades our sight ; but we shall make 
ourselves eyes manifold more powerful than those bestowed 
on us by nature ; we shall get to the primitive atom, the cor- 
puscular element so perseveringly sought by all the sages who 
have preceded us in the sublime pursuit. 

‘¢ Sire, when a man stands astride on that abyss, and has at 
his command divers so intrepid as my brethren, other human 
interests look very small ; hence, we are not dangerous. Re- 
ligious disputes and political struggles are far from us; we are 
immeasurably beyond them. ‘Those who contend with nature 
do not condescend to take men by the throat. 

‘¢ Moreover, every result in our science is appreciable; we 
can measure every effect, we can predict it, whereas in the 
combinations which include men and their interests everything 
is unstable. We shall submit the diamond to our crucible ; 
we shall make diamonds; we shall make gold! Like one of 
our craft at Barcelona, we shall make ships move by the help 
of a little water and fire. We shall dispense with the wind, 
nay, we shall make the wind, we shall make light and renew 
the face of empires by new industries. But we will never 
stoop to mount a throne to be gehennaed by nations.’’ 

Notwithstanding his desire to avoid being entrapped by 
Florentine cunning, the King, as well as his simple-minded 
mistress, was by this time caught and carried away in the 
rhetoric and rhodomontade of this pompous and specious flow 
of words. The lovers’ eyes betrayed how much they were 
dazzled by the vision of mysterious riches spread out before 
them; they saw, as it were, subterranean caverns in long 
perspective full of toiling gnomes. The impatience of curi- 
osity dissipated the alarms of suspicion, 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 315 


“* But, then,’’ exclaimed the King, ‘‘ you are great politi- 
cians, and can enlighten us.’’ 

‘* No, Sire,’’ said Lorenzo simply. 

‘¢Why not ?”’ asked the King. 

‘Sire, it is given to no one to be able to predict what will 
come of a concourse of some thousands of men; we may be 
able to tell what one man will do, how long he will live, and 
whether he will be lucky or unlucky ; but we cannot tell how 
several wills thrown together will act, and any calculation of 
the swing of their interests is even more difficult, for interests 
are men f/us things ; only in solitude can we discern the gen- 
eral aspect of the future. The Protestantism that is devour- 
ing you will be devoured in its turn by its practical outcome, 
which, in its day, will become a theory, too. Europe, so far, 
has not gone further than religion; to-morrow it will attack 
royalty.’’ 

‘¢ Then the night of Saint-Bartholomew was a great concep- 
tion?’’ 

‘¢Ves, Sire; for when the people triumph, they will have 
their Saint-Bartholomew. When religion and royalty are 
swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the 
great they will fall upon the rich. Finally, when Europe is no 
more than a dismembered herd of men for lack of leaders, it 
will be swallowed up by vulgar conquerors. The world has 
presented a similar spectacle twenty times before, and Europe is 
beginning again. Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured 
by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will 
cure itself perhaps. Science is the soul of mankind, and we 
are its pontiffs; and those who study the soul care but little 
for the body.”’ 

‘¢ How far have you gone?’’ asked the King of this strange 
and learned man. 

‘‘We move but slowly; but we never lose what we have 


once conquered.”’ 
‘‘So you, in fact, are the King of the Wizards,’’ said 


316 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


Charles IX., piqued at finding himself so small a personage in 
the presence of this man. 

The imposing Grand Master of Adepts flashed a look at 
him that left him thunder-stricken. 

‘¢ You are the King of men,’’ replied he; ‘‘I am the King 
of ideas. Beside, if there were real wizards, you could not 
have burned them! ’’ he added, with a touch of irony. ‘‘ We 
too have our martyrs.”’ 

‘¢But by what means,”’ the King went on, ‘‘do you cast 
nativities? How did you know that the man near your win- 
dow last night was the King of France? What power enabled 
one of your race to foretell to my mother the fate of her three 
sons? Can you, the Grand Master of the Order that would 
fain knead the world—can you, I say, tell me what the Queen 
my mother is thinking at this moment ?’”’ 

“¢ Yes, Sire.”’ 

The answer was spoken before Cosmo could pull his broth- 
er’s coat to warn him. 

‘“*You know why my brother, the King of Poland, is re- 
turning home?”’ 

‘¢ Ves, Sire.’’ 

“¢ And why?” 

‘¢To take your place.’’ 

‘Our bitterest enemies are our own kith and kin,’’ cried 
the King, starting up in a fury and striding up and down the 
room. ‘Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother! Co- 
ligny was right; my executioners are in the conventicles, 
they are at the Louvre. You are either impostors or regicides! 
Jacob, call in Solern.’’ 

‘*My lord!’’ said Marie Touchet, ‘‘the Ruggieri have 
_your word of honor. You have chosen to eat of the fruit 
of the tree of knowledge; do not complain of its bitter- 
neéss.”’ 

The King smiled with an expression of deep contempt ; 
his material sovereignty seemed small in his eyes in comparison 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 317 


with the supreme intellectual sovereignty of old Lorenzo 
‘Ruggieri. Charles IX. could scarcely govern France; the 
Grand Master of the Rosicrucians commanded an intelligent 
and submissive people. 

‘* Be frank; I give you my word as a gentleman that your 
reply, even if it should contain the avowal of the worst crimes, 
shall be as though it had never been spoken,’’ the King said. 
** Do you study poisons? ’”’ 

‘To know what will secure life, it is needful to know what 
will cause death.’’ 

“You have the secret of many poisons?’’ 

“* Yes, but in theory only, and not in practice; we know 
them, but do not use them.”’ 

‘* Has my mother asked for any?”’ 

‘¢ The Queen-mother, Sire, is far too clever to have recourse 
to such means. She knows that the sovereign who uses poi- 
son shall perish by poison ; the Borgias, and Bianca, Grand 
Duchess of Tuscany, are celebrated examples of the dangers 
incurred by those who use such odious means. At Court 
everything is known. You can kill a poor wretch outright ; of 
what use, then, is it to poison him? But if you attempt the 
life of conspicuous persons, what chance is there of secrecy ? 
Nobody could have fired at Coligny but you, or the Queen- 
mother, or one of the Guises. No one made any mistake 
about that. Take my word for it, in politics poison cannot 
be used twice with impunity; beside, princes always have 
successors. 

‘As to smaller men, if, like Luther, they become sover- 
eigns by the power of ideas, by killing them you do not kill 
their doctrine. The Queen is a Florentine; she knows that 
poison can only be the instrument of private vengeance. My 
brother, who has never left her since she came to France, 
knows how deeply Madame Diane aggrieved her; she never 
thought of poisoning her, and she could have done so, What 
would the King your father have said? No woman would 


318 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


have been more thoroughly justified or more certain of ime | 
punity. But Madame de Valentinois is alive to this day.”’ 

‘« And the magic of wax images?’’ asked the King. 

‘¢ Sire,’’ said Cosmo, ‘‘ those figures are so entirely innocu- 
ous that we lend ourselves to such magic to satisfy blind 
passions, like physicians who give bread-pills to persons who 
fancy themselves sick. A desperate woman imagines that by 
stabbing the heart of an image she brings disaster on the 
faithless lover it represents. What can we say! These are 
our taxes.”’ 

‘“‘The Pope sells indulgences,’’ said Lorenzo Ruggieri, 
smiling. 

“Does my mother make use of such images? ”’ 

‘Of what use would such futile means be to her who can 
do what she will?”’ 

“*Could Queen Catherine save you at this moment?”’ 
asked Charles ominously. 

‘¢We are in no danger, Sire,’’ said Lorenzo calmly. ‘I 
knew before I entered this house that I should leave it safe 
and sound, as surely as I know the ill-feeling that the King 
will bear my brother a few days hence; but, even if he should 
run some risk, he will triumph. Though the King reigns by 
the sword, he also reigns by justice,’’ he added, in allusion to 
the famous motto on a medal struck for Charles IX. 

‘You know everything; I shall die before long, and that 
is well,’’ returned the King, hiding his wrath under feverish 
impatience. ‘* But how will my brother die, who, according 
to you, is to be Henri III. ?”’ 

«¢ A violent death.”’ 

‘* And Monsieur d’Alencon ?’’ 

‘* He will never reign.”’ 

‘*Then Henri de Bourbon will be King?’”’ 

*¢ Yes, Sire.’’ 

‘¢ And what death will he die?’”’ 

" €€A violent death.” 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 319 


** And when I am dead, what will become of madame ?’”’ 
asked the King, turning to Marie Touchet. 

“¢ Madame de Belleville will marry, Sire.’’ 

‘*You are impostors! Send them away, my lord,’’ said 
Marie Touchet. 

‘‘Dear heart, the Ruggieri have my word as a gentleman,’’ 
said Charles, smiling. ‘‘ Will Marie have children ?”’ 

‘¢ Yes—and madame will live to be more than eighty.”’ 

‘*Must I have them hanged?’’ said the King to his mis- 
tress. ‘‘And my son, the Comte d’Auvergne?’’ said Charles, 
rising to fetch the child. 

<¢ Why did you tell him that I should marry?’’ said Marie 
Touchet to the two brothers during the few moments when 
they were alone. 

‘‘Madame,’’ replied Lorenzo with dignity, ‘‘the King 
required us to tell the truth, and we told it.”’ 

‘¢Then it is true? ’’ said she. 

‘‘ As true as that the Governor of Orleans loves you to 
distraction.’’ 

“< But I do not love him,”’ cried she. 

‘« That is true, madame,”’ said Lorenzo. ‘‘ But your horo- 
scope shows that you are to marry the man who at this present 
loves you.”’ 

‘*Could you not tell a little lie for my sake?’’ said she 
with asmile. ‘‘ For if the King should believe your forecast 
he might qe 

‘Ts it not necessary that he should believe in our inno- 
cence ?’’ said Cosmo, with a glance full of meaning. ‘‘ The 
precautions taken by the King against us have given us reason, 
during the time we spent in your pretty gaol, to suppose that 
the occult sciences must have been maligned in his ears.’’ 

‘¢Be quite easy,’’ replied Marie; ‘‘I know him, and his 
doubts are dispelled.”’ 

‘¢ We are innocent,’’ said the old man haughtily. 

‘©So much the better; for at this moment the King is 





320 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 


having your laboratory searched and your crucibles and phials 
examined by experts.” 

The brothers looked at each other and smiled. 

Marie took this smile for the irony of innocence; but it 
meant: ‘‘ Poor simpletons! Do you suppose that if we 
know how to prepare poisons, we do not also know how to 
conceal them ?’’ 

‘¢ Where are the King’s people, then?’’ asked Cosmo. 

“In René’s house,’’ replied Marie; and the Ruggieri ex- 
changed a glance which conveyed from each to each the same 
thought, ‘‘ The Hotel de Soissons is inviolable! ’’ 

The King had so completely thrown off his suspicions, that 
when he went to fetch his son, and Jacob intercepted him to 
give him a note written by Chapelain, he opened it in the 
certainty of finding in it what his physician told him concern- 
ing his visit to the laboratory, where all that had been discov- 
ered bore solely on alchemy. 

«¢ Will he live happy ?”’ asked the King, showing his infant 
son to the two alchemists. 

‘¢ This is Cosmo’s concern,’’ said Lorenzo, turning to his 
brother. 

Cosmo took the child’s little hand and studied over it very 
carefully. 

‘‘Monsieur,’’ said Charles IX. to the elder man, ‘‘ if you 
are compelled to deny the existence of the spirit to believe 
that your enterprise is possible, tell me how it is that you can 
doubt that which constitutes your power. The mind you de- 
sire to annihilate is the torch that illumines your search. Ah, 
ha! Is not that moving while denying the fact of motion ?’”’ 
cried he, and, pleased at having hit on this argument, he 
looked triumphantly at his mistress. 

‘‘Mind,”’ said Lorenzo Ruggieri, “is the exercise of an 
internal sense, just as the faculty of seeing various objects 
and appreciating their form and color is the exercise of our 
sight. That has nothing to do with what is assumed as to 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC1. 321 


another life. Mind—thought—is a faculty which may cease 
even during life with the forces that produce it.’’ 

‘*You are logical,’ said the King with surprise. ‘But 
alchemy is an atheistical science.’’ 

‘* Materialist, Sire, which is quite a different thing. Mate- 
rialism is the outcome of the Indian doctrines transmitted 
through the mysteries of Isis to Chaldea and Egypt, and 
brought back to Greece. by Pythagoras, one of the demi-gods 
among men; his doctrine of transmigration is the mathe- 
matics of materialism, the living law of its phases. Each of 
the different creations which make up the earthly creation 
possesses the power of retarding the impulse that drags it into 
another form.”’ 

‘¢ Then alchemy is the science of sciences! ’’ cried Charles 
IX., fired with enthusiasm. ‘‘I must see you at work.”’ 

** As often as you will, Sire. You cannot be more eager 
than the Queen your mother.” 

_ Ah! That is why she is so much attached to you!” 
cried the King. 

‘*The House of Medici has secretly encouraged our re- 
search for almost a century past.’’ 

‘¢ Sire,’’ said Cosmo, ‘‘ this child will live nearly a hundred 
years ; he will meet with some checks, but will be happy and 
honored, having in his veins the blood of the Valois.”’ 

‘<T will. go to see you,’’ said the King, who had recovered 
his good humor. ‘‘ You can go.”’ 

The brothers bowed to Marie and Charles IX. and with- 
drew. They solemnly descended the stairs, neither looking 
at each other nor speaking ; they did not even turn to look 
up at the windows from the courtyard, so sure were they that 
the King’s eye was on them; and, in fact, as they turned to 
pass through the gate, they saw Charles IX. at a window. 

As soon as the alchemist and the astrologer were in the Rue 
de l’Autruche, they cast a look in front and behind to see 
that no one was either following them or waiting for them, 

21 


322 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDIC. 


and went on as far as the Louvre moat without speaking a 
word ; but there, finding that they were alone, Lorenzo said 
to Cosmo in the Florentine Italian of the time— 

“Affe a’ Lddio! como le abbiamo infinocchtato /’’ (By God, 
we have caught them finely !) 

““Gran mercés ! a lut sta di spartojarst’’—(Much good may 
it do him; he must make what he can of it)—said Cosmo. 
“¢ May the Queen do as much for me! We have done a good 
stroke for her.”’ 


Some days after this scene, which had struck Marie Touchet 
no less than the King, in one of those moments when in the 
fullness of joy the mind is in some sort released from the body, 
Marie exclaimed— 

‘¢ Charles, I understand Lorenzo Ruggieri; but Cosmo said 
nothing.”’ 

‘¢ That is true,’’ said the King, startled by this sudden flash 
of light, ‘‘and there was as much falsehood as truth in what 
they said. Those Italians are as slippery as the silk they 
spin.”’ 

This suspicion explains the hatred of Cosmo that the King 
betrayed on the occasion of the trial on the conspiracy of la 
Mole and Coconnas. When he found that Cosmo was one 
of the contrivers of that plot, the King believed himself duped 
by the two Italians; for it proved to him that his mother’s 
astrologer did not devote himself exclusively to studying the 
stars, fulminating powder and final atoms. Lorenzo had then 
left the country. 

In spite of many persons’ incredulity of such things, the 
events which followed this scene confirmed the prophecies 
uttered by the Ruggieri. 

The King died three months later. The Comte de Gondi 
followed Charles IX. to the tomb, as he had been told that he 
would by his brother, the Maréchal de Retz, a friend of the 
Ruggieri, and a believer in their foresight. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 325 


Marie Touchet married Charles de Balzac, Marquis d’En- 
tragues, Governor of Orleans, by whom she had two daughters. 
The more famous of these two, the Comte d’Auvgzgne’s half- 
sister, was Henri IV.’s mistress, and at the time of Biron’s 
conspiracy tried to place her brother on the throne of France 
and oust the Bourbons. 

The Comte d’Auvergne, made Duc d’Angouléme, lived till 
the reign of Louis XIV. He coined money in his province, 
altering the superscription ; but Louis XIV. did not interfere, 
illegal as it was, so great was his respect for the blood of the 
Valois. 

Cosmo lived till after the accession of Louis XIII.; he saw 
the fall of the House of Medici in France and the overthrow 
of the Concini. History has taken care to record that he died 
an atheist—that is to say, a materialist. 

The Marquise d’Entragues was more than eighty when she 
died. 

Lorenzo and Cosmo had for their disciple the famous 
Comte de Saint- Germain, who became notorious under Louis 
XV. The great alchemist was not less than a hundred and 
thirty years old, the age to which some biographers say 
Marion Delorme attained. The Count may have heard from 
the Ruggieri anecdotes of the Massacre of Saint-Bartholomew 
and of the reigns of the Valois, in which they could at pleas- 
ure assume a part by speaking in the first person. ‘The Comte 
de Saint-Germain is the last#professor of alchemy who ex- 
plained the science well, but he left no writings. The doctrine 
of the Cabala set forth in this volume was derived from that 
mysterious personage. 

It is a strange thing! Three men’s lives, that of the old 
man from whom this information was obtained, that of the 
Comte de Saint-Germain, and that of Cosmo Ruggieri, em- 
brace European history from the reign of Francis I. to that 
of Napoleon. Only fifty lives of equal length would cover 
the time to as far back as the first known epoch of the world. 


324 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘‘What are fifty generations for studying the mysteries of 
life? ’’ the Comte de Saint-Germain used to say. 


Paris, /Vovember-December, 1836. 


[ NoTr.—Charles de Balzac, mentioned on page 323, was not in any 
way connected with the family of the author. The Comte d’Auvergne, 
Duc d’Angouléme, was, of course, the child of Charles IX. and Marie 
Touchet. ] 





TUN 


PART (1. 
THE TWO DREAMS. 


In 1786 Bodard de Saint-James, treasurer to the Navy, was 
of all the financiers of Paris the one whose luxury gave rise to 
most remark and gossip. At that time he was building his 
famous Folly at Neuilly, and his wife bought, to crown the 
tester of her bed, a plume of feathers of which the price had 
dismayed the Queen. It was far easier then than now to 
make one’s self the fashion and be talked of by all Paris; a 
witticism was often quite enough, or the caprice of a woman. 

Bodard lived in the fine house in the Place Vendéme which 
the farmer-general Dangé had not long since been compelled 
to quit. This notorious epicurean was lately dead; and on 
the day when he was buried, Monsieur de Biévre, his intimate 
friend, had found matter for a jest, saying that now one could 
cross the Place Vendéme without danger (or Dangé). This 
allusion to the terrific gambling that went on in the deceased 
man’s house was his funeral oration. The house is that oppo- 
site to the Chancellerie. 

To complete Bodard’s history as briefly as possible, he was 
a poor creature, he failed for fourteen millions of francs after 
the Prince de Guéménée. His clumsiness in not anticipating 
that serene bankruptcy—to use an expression of Lebrun-Pin- 
dare’s—led to his never even being mentioned. He died in 
a garret, like Bourvalais, Bouret, and many others. 

Madame de Saint-James indulged an ambition of never re- 
ceiving any but people of quality—a stale absurdity that is ever 
new. To her the cap of a lawyer in the Parlement was but a 
small affair ; she wanted to see her rooms filled with persons 
of title who had at least the minor privileges of entrée at Ver- 


sailles. To say that many blue ribbons were to be seen in 
(325) 


326 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


the lady’s house would be untrue ; but it is quite certain that 
she had succeeded in winning the civility and attention of 
some members of the Rohan family, as was proved subse- 
quently in the too famous case of the Queen’s necklace. 

One evening—it was, I believe, in August, 1786—I was 
greatly surprised to see in this millionaire’s room, precise as 
she was in the matter of proofs of rank, two new faces, which 
struck me as being of decidedly inferior birth. 

She came up to me as I stood in a window recess, where I 
had intentionally ensconced myself. 

“‘Do tell me,’’ said I, with a questioning glance at one of 
these strangers, ‘‘ who is that specimen? How did he get 
into your house ?’”’ 

‘‘ He is a charming man.”’ 

‘Do you see him through the prism of love, or am I mis- 
taken in him?’’ 

**You are not mistaken,’’ she replied, laughing ; ‘he is as 
ugly as a toad; but he has done me the greatest service a 
woman can accept from a man.”’ 

As I looked at her with mischievous meaning, she hastened 
to add—‘‘ He has entirely cured me of the ugly red patches 
which spoilt my complexion and made me look like a peasant 
woman.”’ 

I shrugged my shoulders with disgust. 

**A quack!’’ I exclaimed. 

‘*No,’’ said she, ‘‘he is a physician to the Court pages. 
He is clever and amusing, I assure you; and he has written 
books too. He is a very learned physicist.’’ 

“‘TIf his literary style is like his face!’’ said I, smiling. 
‘« And the other ?’’ 

‘¢What other?’’ 

** That little prim man, as neat as a doll, and who looks as 
if he drank verjuice.”’ 

‘‘ He is a man of good family,’’ said she. ‘‘ He has come 
from some province—I forget which. Ah! yes, from Artois. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 327 


He is in Paris to wind up some affair that concerns the car- 
dinal, and his eminence has just introduced him to Monsieur 
de Saint-James. They have agreed in choosing Monsieur de 
Saint-James to be arbitrator. In that the gentleman from the 
provinces has not shown much wisdom. What are people 
thinking of when they place acase in that man’s hands? He 
is as gentle as a lamb and as shy asa girl. His eminence is 
most kind to him.’’ 

‘¢ What is it about ?”’ said I. 

‘¢ Three hundred thousand livres,’’ said she. 

‘*What! a lawyer?’’ I asked, with a Tittle start of as- 
tonishment. 

“¢ Yes,’’ replied she. 

And, somewhat disturbed by having to make this humilia- 
ting confession, Madame Bodard returned to her game of faro. 

Every table was made up. I had nothing to do or to say. 
I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval, 
whom I had met in a courtesan’s drawing-room. I went to 
take a seat in a deep chair near the fire. If ever on this earth 
there was an astonished man, it certainly was I on discovering 
that my opposite neighbor was the controller-general. Mon- 
sieur de Calonne seemed to be drowsy, or else he was absorbed 
in one of those brown studies which come over a statesman. 
When I pointed out the Minister to Beaumarchais, who came 
to speak to me, the creator of ‘‘ Figaro ’’ explained the mystery 
without speaking a word. He pointed first to my head and 
then to Bodard’s in an ingeniously significant way, by direct- 
ing his thumb to one and his little finger to the other, with 
the rest of the fingers closed. My first impulse was to go and 
say something sharp to Calonne, but I sat still; in the first 
place, because I intended to play the favorite trick, and also 
because Beaumarchais had somewhat familiarly seized my 
hand. 

‘¢ What is it, monsieur ?’’ said I. 

With a wink he indicated the Minister. 


328 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


‘‘ Do not wake him,’’ he said in a low tone; ‘‘ we may be 
only too thankful when he sleeps.’’ 

‘* But even sleeping is a scheme of finance,’’ said I. 

‘¢ Certainly it is,’’ replied the statesmen, who had read our 
words by the mere motion of our lips. ‘‘ And would to God 
we could sleep a long time; there would not be such an 
awakening as you will see!’’ 

‘¢Monseigneur,’’ said the play-writer, “‘I owe you some 
thanks.’’ 

*¢ What for?’’ 

‘¢ Monsieur de Mirabeau is gone to Berlin. I do not know 
whether in this matter of the waters we may not both be 
drowned.”’ 

“You have too much memory and too little gratitude,”’ 
replied the Minister drily, vexed at this betrayal of one of 
his secrets before me. 

“‘Very possibly,’’ said Beaumarchais, greatly nettled. 
But I have certain millions which may square many 
accounts.”’ . 

Calonne affected not to have heard. 

It was half-past twelve before the card-tables broke up. 
Then we sat down to supper—ten of us: Bodard and his wife, 
the controller-general, Beaumarchais, the two strangers, two 
pretty women whose names may not be mentioned, and a 
farmer-general named, I think, Lavoisier. Of thirty persons 
whom I had found on entering the drawing-room but these 
ten remained. And the two ‘‘specimens’’ would only stay 
to supper on the pressing invitation of the lady of the house, 
who thought she could discharge her debt to one by giving 
him a meal, and asked the other perhaps to please her husband, 
to whom she was doing the civil—wherefore I know not. 
Monsieur de Calonne was a power, and if any one had cause 
to be annoyed it would have been I. 

The supper was at first deadly dull. The two men and the 
farmer-general weighed on us. I signed to Beaumarchais to 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIC. 329 


make the son of Esculapius, by whom he was sitting, drink 
till he was tipsy, giving him to understand that I would deal 
with the lawyer. As this was the only kind of amusement 
open to us, and as it gave promise of some blundering imper- 
tinence on the part of the two strangers, which amused us by 
anticipation, Monsieur de Calonne smiled on the scheme. 
In two seconds the ladies had entered into our Bacchic plot. 
By significant glances they expressed their readiness to play 
their part, and the wine of Sillery crowned our glasses again 
and again with silvery foam. The surgeon was easy enough 
to deal with; but as I was about to pour out my neighbor’s 
second glass, he told me with the cold politeness of a money- 
lender that he would drink no more. 

At this time, by what chance I know not, Madame de 
Saint-James had turned the conversation on the wonderful 
suppers to the Comte de Cagliostro, given by the Cardinal de 
Rohan. My attention was not too keenly alive to what the 
mistress of the house was saying; for since her reply I had 
watched, with invincible curiosity, my neighbor’s pinched, thin 
face, of which the principal feature was a nose at once wide 
and sharp, which made him at times look very much like a 
ferret. Suddenly his cheeks flushed as he heard Madame de 
Saint-James disputing with Monsieur de Calonne. 

‘But I assure you, monsieur,’’ said she in a positive tone, 
‘that I have seen Queen Cleopatra.’’ 

‘I believe it, madame,” said my neighbor. ‘I have 
spoken to Catherine de’ Medici.’’ 

“*Oh! oh!’’ said Monsieur de Calonne. 

The words spoken by the little provincial had an inde- 
scribably sonorous tone—to use a word borrowed from physi- 
cal science. This sudden clearness of enunciation, from a man 
who till now had spoken very little and very low, in the best 
possible taste, surprised us in the highest degree. 

‘‘Why, he is talking!’’ exclaimed the surgeon, whom 
Beaumarchais had worked up to a satisfactory condition. 


330 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


‘‘His neighbor must have touched a spring,’’ replied the 
satirist. 

Our man colored a little as he heard these words, though 
they were spoken in a murmur. 

‘¢And what was the late lamented Queen like?’’ asked 
Calonne. 

‘I will not assert that the person with whom I supped last 
night was Catherine de’ Medici herself; such a miracle must 
seem as impossible to a Christian as to a philosopher,’’ replied 
the lawyer, resting his finger-tips lightly on the table, and 
leaning back in his chair as if preparing to speak at some 
length. ‘‘ But, at any rate, I can swear that that woman was 
as like to Catherine de’ Medici as though they had been sis- 
ters. The lady I saw wore a black velvet dress, absolutely like 
that which the Queen is wearing in the portrait belonging to 
the King; on her head was the characteristic black velvet 
cap; her complexion was colorless, and her face the face you 
know. I could not help expressing my surprise to his emi- 
nence. The suddenness of the apparition was all the more 
- wonderful because Monsieur le Comte de Cagliostro* could not 
guess the name of the personage in whose company I wished 
to be. I was utterly amazed. The magical spectacle of a_ 
supper where such illustrious women of the past were the guests 
robbed me of my presence of mind. When, at about mid- 
night, I got away from this scene of witchcraft, I almost 
doubted my own identity. 

‘* But all these marvels seemed quite natural by comparison . 
with the strange hallucination under which I was presently to 
fall. I know not what words I can use to describe the condi- 
tion of my senses. But I can declare, in all sincerity of heart, 
that I no longer wonder that there should have been, of old, 
spirits weak enough—or strong enough—to believe in the 
mysteries of magic and the power of the devil. For my part, 
till I have ampler information, I regard the apparitions of 


* Joseph Balsamo, a sorcerer. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’? MEDICI. 331 


which Cardan and certain other thaumaturgists have spoken as 
quite possible.’’ 

These words, pronounced with incredible eloquence of tone, 
were of a nature to rouse extreme curiosity in those present. 
Our looks all centred on the orator, and we sat motionless. 
Our eyes alone showed life as they reflected the bright wax- 
lights in the candlesticks. By dint of watching the stranger 
we fancied we could see an emanation from the pores of his 
face, and especially from those of his brow, of the inner feel- 
ings that wholly possessedhim. This man, apparently so cold 
and strictly reserved, seemed to have within him a hidden fire, 
of which the flame came forth to us. 

‘*T know not,’’ he went on, ‘‘ whether the figure I had seen 
called up made itself invisible to follow me; but as soon as I 
had laid my head on my pillow, I saw the grand shade of Cath- 
erine rise before me. I instinctively felt myself in a luminous 
sphere; for my eyes, attracted to the Queen with painful fixity, 
saw her alone. Suddenly she bent over me a 

At these words the ladies with one consent betrayed keener 
curiosity. 

“‘But,’’ said the lawyer, ‘‘I do not know whether I ought 
to go on; although I am inclined to think that it was but a 
dream, what remains to be told is serious.”’ 

‘¢ Does it bear on religion ?’’ asked Beaumarchais. 

“Or is it in any way indecent ?’’ asked Calonne. ‘‘ These 
ladies will forgive it.”’ 

“Tt bears on government,’’ replied the lawyer. 

‘©Go on,’’ said the Minister. ‘‘ Voltaire, Diderot, and 
their like have done much to educate our ears.”’ 

The controller-general was all attention, and his neighbor, 
Madame de Genlis, became absorbed. The stranger still 
hesitated. Then Beaumarchais exclaimed impetuously— 

«Come, proceed, master! Do you not know that when 
the laws leave folk so little liberty, people revenge themselves 
by laxity of manners ?’’ 





? 


332 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 


So the lawyer went on— 

‘* Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my 
soul or that I was prompted by some unknown power, I said 
to her— 

*«¢ Ah, madame, you committed a very great crime.’ 

‘¢¢ Which?’ she asked in a deep voice. 

‘¢« That for which the signal was given by the Palace clock 
on the 24th of August.’ 

‘¢ She smiled scornfully, and some deep furrows showed on 
her pallid cheeks. 

“¢* Do you call that a crime?’ replied she; ‘it was only an 
accident. The undertaking was badly managed, and the good 
result we looked for failed—for France, for all Europe, and 
for the Catholic Church. How could we help it? Our orders 
were badly carried out. We could not find so many Mont- 
lucs as we needed. Posterity will not give us credit for the 
defective communications which hindered us from giving our 
work the unity of impulse which is necessary to any great 
Coup ad’ Etat; that was our misfortune. If by the 25th of 
August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in France, 
I should have been regarded to the remotest posterity as a 
noble incarnation of Providence. How often have the clear- 
seeing spirits of Sixtus V., of Richelieu, of Bossuet, secretly 
accused me of having failed in my undertaking, after daring 
to conceive of it! And how many regrets attended my death! 

‘©<¢The disease was still rife thirty years after that Saint- 
Bartholomew’s night ; and it had caused the shedding of ten 
times more noble blood in France than was left to be shed on 
August 26, 1572. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for 
which you had medals struck, cost more tears, more blood 
and money, and killed more prosperity in France than three 
Saint-Bartholomews. Letellier, with a dip of ink, carried 
into effect the decree which the Crown had secretly desired 
since my day; but though on August 25, 1572, this tremen- 
dous execution was necessary, on August 25, 1685, it was use- 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 333 


less. Under Henri de Valois’ second son heresy was scarcely 
pregnant ; under Henri de Bourbon’s second son the teeming 
mother had cast her spawn over the whole world. 

“*¢ You accuse me of crime and you raise statues to the son 
of Anne of Austria! But he and I aimed at the same end. 
He succeeded ; I failed ; but Louis XIV. found the Protest- 
ants disarmed, while in my day they had powerful armies, 
statesmen, captains, and Germany to back them.’ 

‘* On hearing these words slowly spoken, I felt within me a 
tremulous thrill. Iseemed to scent the blood of I know not 
what victims. Catherine had grown before me. She stood 
there like an evil genius, and I felt as if she wanted to get 
into my conscience to find rest there “es 

‘¢ He must have dreamed that,’’ said Beaumarchais. in a 
low voice. ‘‘ He certainly never invented it.’’ 

«¢¢ My reason is confounded,’ said I to the Queen. ‘You 
pride yourself on an action which three generations have con- 
_demned and held accursed, and : 

‘¢¢ Add,’ said she, ‘ that writers have been more unjust to 
me than my contemporaries were. No one undertakes my 
defense. I am accused of ambition—I who was so rich and a 
Queen. I am taxed with cruelty—I who have but two de- 
capitations on my conscience. And to the most impartial 
minds I am still, no doubt, a great riddle. Do you zeally 
believe that I was governed by feelings of hatred, that I 
breathed only vengeance and fury?’ She smiled scornfully. 
‘I was as calm and cold as Reason itself. I condemned the 
Huguenots without pity, but without anger; they were the 
rotten orange in my basket. If I had been Queen of England, 
I should have judged the Catholics in the same way, if they 
had been seditious. To give our power any vitality at that 
period, only one God could be allowed in the State, only one 
faith and one master. Happily for me, I left my excuse 
recorded in one sentence. When Birague brought me a false 
report of the loss of the battle of Dreux. ‘‘ Well and good,”’ 








334 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


said I, ‘‘ then we will go to sermon.’’ Hate the leaders of 
the New Religion? I esteemed them highly, and I did not 
know them. IfI ever felt an aversion for any political per- 
sonage, it was for that cowardly Cardinal de Lorraine, and 
for his brother, a wily and brutal soldier, who had me 
watched by their spies. They were my children’s enemies ; 
they wanted to snatch the crown from them; I saw them 
every day, and they were more than I could bear. If we had 
not carried out the plan for Saint-Bartholomew’s Day, the 
Guises would have done it with the help of Rome and its 
monks. The League, which had no power till I had grown 
old, would have begun in 1573.’ 

«* «But, madame,’ said I, ‘ instead of commanding that hor- 
rible butchery—excuse my frankness—why did you not employ 
the vast resources of your political genius in giving the Re- 
formers the wise institutions which made Henry IV.’s reign 
so glorious and peaceful ?’ 

‘¢ She smiled again, shrugging her shoulders, and her hollow 
wrinkles gave her pale features an ironical expression full of 
bitterness. 

‘¢¢ After a furious struggle a nation needs repose,’ said she. 
‘That is the secret of that reign. But Henri IV. committed 
two irremediable blunders: He ought neither to have abjured 
Protestantism nor to have left France Catholic after his own 
conversion. He alone has ever been in a position to change 
the face of France without a shock. Either not a single stole 
or not a single conventicle! That is what he ought to have 
seen. To leave two hostile principles at work in a govern- 
ment with nothing to balance them is a crime in a King; it 
is sowing the seed of revolutions. It belongs to God alone 
to leave good and evil for ever at odds in the work of His 
hand. But this sentence was, perhaps, inscribed at the founda- 
tions of Henri IV.’s policy, and, maybe, it was what led to 
his death. It is impossible that Sully should not have cast a 
covetous eye on the immense possessions of the clergy—though 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 335 


the clergy were not their sole masters, for the nobles dissipated 
at least two-thirds of the church revenues. Sully the Re- 
former owned abbeys nevertheless.’ She paused, to think, as 
it seemed. 

‘* «But does it occur to you,’ said she, ‘ that you are asking 
a Pope’s niece her reason for remaining Catholic?’ Again 
she paused. ‘And, after all, I would just as soon have been 
a Calvinist,’ she went on, with a gesture of indifference. 
‘Can the superior men of your age still think that religion 
had really anything to do with that great trial, the most tre- 
mendous of those that Europe has been required to decide— 
a vast revolution retarded by trivial causes, which will not 
hinder it from overflowing the whole world since I failed to 
stop it. A revolution,’ said she, with a look of deep mean- 
ing, ‘which is still progressing, and which you may achieve. 
Yes, You, who hear me!’ 

‘«T shuddered. 

“¢¢What! Has no one yet understood that old interests 
on one hand, and on the other new interests, had taken Rome 
and Luther to be their standards of battle! What! When 
Louis IX., to avoid a somewhat kindred struggle, dragged 
after him a population a hundred times greater than that I 
condemned to death, and left them in the sands of Egypt, 
he earned the title of saint, while I,’ she added, ‘ failed.’ 

*¢ She looked down and stood silent fora minute. It was 
no longer a Queen that I beheld, but rather one of those 
Druidesses of old who sacrificed men, and could unroll the 
pages of the future while exhuming the lore of the past. But 
she presently raised her royal and majestic face. 

‘¢« By directing the attention of the middle-classes to the 
abuses of the Roman Church,’ said she, ‘ Luther and Calvin 
gave birth in Europe to a spirit of investigation which inevit- 
ably led the nations to examine everything. Examination 
leads to doubt. Instead of the faith indispensable to social 
existence, they brought in their train, and long after them, an 


333 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 


inquisitive philosophy, armed with hammers, and greedy of 
destruction. Science, with its false lights, sprang glittering 
from the womb of heresy. Reform in the church was not so 
much what was aimed at as the indefinite liberty of man, 
which is fatal to power. I haveseen that. The result of the 
successes of the Reformers in their contest against the priest- 
hood—even at that time better armed and more formidable 
than the Crown—was the destruction of the monarchical 
power raised with so much difficulty by Louis XI. on the 
ruins of feudality. Their aim was nothing less than the anni- 
hilation of religion and royalty, and over their wreck the 
middle-classes of all lands were to join in a common compact. 
Thus this contest was war to the death between these new 
ailies and ancient laws and beliefs. The Catholics were the 
representative expression of the material interests of the 
Crown, the nobility, and the priesthood. 

“<¢Tt was a duel to the death between two giants; the 
night of Saint-Bartholomew was, unfortunately, only a wound. 
Remember that, to save a few drops of blood at the right 
moment, a torrent had to be shed ata later day. There isa 
misfortune which the intelligence that looks down on a king- 
dom cannot avert: that, namely, of having no peers by whom 
to be judged when he succumbs under the burden of events. 
My peers are few; fools are in the majority ; these two prop- 
ositions account for everything. If my name is held in exe- 
cration in France, the inferior minds which constitute the 
mass of every generation are to blame. 

‘©<In such great crises as I have been through, reigning 
does not mean holding audience, reviewing troops, and sign- 
ing decrees. I may have made mistakes ; I was but a woman, 
But why was there no man then living who was superior to 
the age? The Duke of Alva had a soul of iron, Philip II. 
was stultified by Catholic dogmas, Henri IV. was a gambler 
and a libertine, the admiral was systematically pig-headed. 
Louis XI, had lived too soon; Richelieu came too late. 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 337 


Whether it were virtuous or criminal, whether the Massacre of 
Saint-Bartholomew is attributed to me or not, I accept the 
burden. I shall always stand between those two great men as 
a visible link in an unrecognized chain. Some day paradox- 
ical writers will wonder whether nations have not sometimes 
given the name of executioner to those who, in fact, were 
victims. Not once only will mankind be ready to immolate 
a God rather than accuse itself! You are all ready to shed 
tears for two hundred louts, when you refuse them for the 
woes of a generation, of a century, of the whole world! 
And you also forget that political liberty, the peace of a 
nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a 
heavy tax in blood!’ 

‘¢ ¢ May the nations never be happy at less cost?’ cried I, 
with tears in my eyes. 

‘¢¢ Great Truths leave their wells only to find fresh vigor 
in baths of blood. Christianity itself, the essence of all 
_truth, since it proceeds from God, was not established with- 
out martyrs. Has not blood flowed in torrents? Must it not 
for ever flow? You will know—you who are to be one of the 
builders of the social edifice founded by the apostles. As 
long as you use your instruments to level heads, you will be 
applauded ; then, when you want to take up the trowel, you 
will be killed.’ 

‘¢* Blood! blood !’—the words rang in my brain like the 
echo of a bell. 

“¢¢ According to you,’ said I, ‘ Protestantism has the same 
right as you have to argue thus ?’ 

‘*But Catherine had vanished as though some draught of 
air had extinguished the supernatural light which enabled my 
mind to see the figure which had grown to gigantic propor- 
tions. I had:suddenly discerned in myself an element which 
assimilated the horrible doctrines set forth by the Italian 
Queen. 

‘©T awoke in a sweat and in tears; and at the moment 

22 


338 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


when reason, triumphing within me, assured me in her mild 
tones that it was not the function of a King, nor even of a 
nation, to practice these principles, worthy only of a people 
of atheists 

«¢ And how are perishing monarchies to be saved?’’ asked 
Beaumarchais. 

‘God is above all, monsieur,’’ replied my neighbor. 

‘* Well, then,’’ said Monsieur de Calonne, with the flip- 
pancy which characterized him, ‘‘ we have always the resource 
of believing ourselves to be instruments in the hand of God, 
as the gospel according to Bossuet has it.’’ 

As soon as the ladies understood that the whole scene was a 
conversation between the Queen and the lawyer, they had 
begun whispering. Indeed, I have spared the reader the 
exclamations and interruptions with which they broke into 
the lawyer’s narrative. However, such phrases as, ‘‘ What a 
deadly bore!’’ and ‘‘ My dear, when will he have done?’’ 
reached my ear. 

When the stranger ceased speaking, the ladies were silent. 
Monsieur Bodard was asleep. The surgeon being half-drunk, 
Lavoisier, Beaumarchais, and I alone had been listening; 
Monsieur de Calonne was playing with the lady at his side. 

At this moment the silence was almost solemn. The light 
of the tapers seemed to me to have a magical hue. A com- 
mon sentiment linked us by mysterious bonds to this man 
who, to me, suggested the inexplicable effects of fanaticism. 
It needed nothing less than the deep hollow voice of Beau- 
marchais’ neighbor to rouse us. 

“*T too dreamed !’’ he exclaimed. 

I then looked more particularly at the surgeon and felt an 
indescribable sentiment of horror. His earthy complexion, 
his features, large but vulgar, were the exact expression of 
what I must be allowed to call /a canaille, the rough mob. 
A few specks of dull blue and black dotted his skin like spots 
of mud, and his eyes flashed with sinister fires. The face 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 339 


looked more ominous perhaps than it really was, because a 
powdered wig @ da frimas (rimy or like hoar-frost) crowned 
his head with snow. 

‘‘That man must have buried more than one patient,’’ said 
I to my neighbor. 

**T would not trust my dog to his care,’’ he replied. 

‘TI hate him involuntarily,’’ said I. 

‘*T despise him,’’ replied he. 

“¢ And yet how unjust !”’ cried I. 

“Qh! bless me, by the day after to-morrow he may be as 
famous as Volange the actor,’’ replied the stranger. 

Monsieur de Calonne pointed to the surgeon with a gesture 
that seemed to convey, ‘ This fellow might amuse us.’’ 

‘‘ And did you too dream of a queen ?’’ asked Beaumarchais, 

‘No, I dreamed of a people,’’ said he with emphasis, mak- 
ing us laugh. ‘I was attending a patient whose leg I was to 
amputate the next day ay 
- **And you found a people in your patient’s thigh? ’’ asked 
Monsieur de Calonne. 

“Exactly so!’’ replied the surgeon. 

“‘Is he not amusing ?’’ cried Madame de Genlis. 

‘‘T was greatly surprised,’’ the speaker went on, never 
heeding these interruptions, and stuffing his hands into his 
breeches pockets, ‘‘ to find some one to talk to in that leg. I 
had the strange power of entering into my patient. When I 
first found myself in his skin, I discerned there an amazing 
number of tiny beings, moving, thinking, and arguing. Some 
lived in the man’s body and some in his mind. His ideas 
were creatures that were born, grew, and died; they were 
sick, gay, healthy, sad—and all had personal individuality. 
They fought or fondled. A few ideas flew forth and went to 
dwell in the world of intellect. Suddenly I understood that 
there are two worlds—the visible and the invisible universe ; 
that the earth, like man, has a body and a soul. A new light 
was cast on nature, and I perceived its immensity when I saw 





340 ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICY. 


the ocean of beings everywhere distributed in masses and in 
species, all of one and the same living matter, from marble 
rocks up to God. <A magnificent sight! In short, there was 
a universe in my patient. When I inserted my lancet in his 
gangrened leg, I destroyed a thousand such beings. You 
laugh, ladies, at the idea that you are a prey to a thousand 
creatures f: 

‘¢ No personalities,’’ said Monsieur de Calonne, ‘‘ speak for 
yourself and your patient.’’ 

_ « My man, horrified at the outcry of his animalcules, wanted 
to stop the operation ; but I persisted, telling him that malig- 
nant creatures were already gnawing at his bones. He made 
a motion to resist me, not understanding that what I was 
doing was for his good, and my lancet pierced me in the 
side——”’ 

‘¢ He is too stupid,”’ said Lavoisier. 

‘* No, he is drunk,’’ replied Beaumarchais. 

*‘But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning,’’ cried the 
surgeon. 

*©Oh, oh!”’ cried Bodard, waking, ‘‘ my leg is asleep!’ 

‘¢ Your animalcules are dead,’’ said his wife. 

‘That man has a vocation,’’ put in my neighbor, who 
had imperturbably stared at the surgeon all the time he was 
talking. 

‘*It is to monsieur’s vocation what action is to speech or 
the body to the soul,” said the ugly guest. 

But his tongue was heavy, and he got confused ; he could 
only utter unintelligible words. Happily, the conversation 
took another turn. By the end of half an hour we had for- 
gotten the surgeon to the Court pages and he was asleep. 

When we arose from table, the rain was to be seen pouring 
in torrents. 

‘¢ The lawyer is no fool,’’ said I to Beaumarchais. 

‘Oh, he is dull and cold. But you see the provinces can 
still produce good folk who take political theories and the 





ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI. 341 


history of France quite seriously. It is a leaven that will 
spread.’’ 

‘‘ Have you a carriage?’’ Madame de Saint-James asked 
me. 

‘© No,’’ said I shortly. ‘‘Idid not know that I should want 
it this evening. You thought, perhaps, that I should take 
home the controller-general? Did he come to your house en 
polisson ?’’ (the fashionable name at the time for a person who 
drove his own carriage at Marly dressed as a coachman). 
Madame de Saint-James left me hastily, rang the bell, ordered 
her husband’s carriage, and took the lawyer aside. 

‘Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the favor of 
seeing Monsieur Marat home, for he is incapable of standing 
upright ?’’ said she. 

‘‘With pleasure, madame,’’ replied Monsieur de Robes- 
pierre with an air of gallantry ; ‘‘I wish you had ordered me 
to do something more difficult.’’ 


Paris, January, 1828. 





NOTE. 


This is the song published by the Abbé de la Place in his collection of 
interesting fragments, in which may be found the dissertation alluded to. 
[it will be seen that it goes to the old tune of Malbrouk s’en va-t-en 
guerre.| 

THE DUC DE GUISE’S BURIAL, 
Qui veut ouir chanson? (S%s.) 
C’est du Grand Duc de Guise; 
Et bon bon bon bon, 
Di dan di dan don, 
C’est du Grand Duc de Guise! 
(This last line was spoken, no doubt, in a comic tone.) 
Quz est mort et enterré. 


Qui est mort et enterré. (Bis.) 
Aux quatre coins du poéle, 

Et bon bon bon bon, 

Di dan di dan don, 
Quatre gentilshomm’s y avott. 


Quatre gentilshomm’s y avoit. (Bés.) 
L’un portoit son grand casque, 

Et bon, etc. 
Et Pautre ses pistolets. 


Et l’autre ses pistolets, (Bis.) 
Et l’autre son épée, 

Et bon, etc. 
Qui tant ad’ Hugu’nots a tués. 


Qui tant d’Hugw’nots a tués, (B7s.) 
Venoit le quatriéme, 

Et bon, etc. 
Qui étoit le plus dolent, 


Qui étoit le plus dolent; (Zzs.) 
Aprés venoient les pages, 
Et bon, etc. 
Et les valets de pied. 
(342) 


ABOUT CATHERINE DE’ MEDIC. 343 


Et les valets de pied, (Bis.) 

Avecque de grands crépes, 
Et bon, etc. 

Lt des souliers cirés. 


Et des souliers cirés, (Bzs.) 

Et des beaux bas d’estame, 
Et bon, etc. 

Lit des culottes de piau. 


Et des culottes de piau, (Bzs.) 
La cérémonie faite, 

Et bon, etc. 
Chacun salla coucher. 


Chacun s’alla coucher : (Zzs.) 

Les uns avec leurs femmes, 
Et bon, etc. 

Et les autres tout seuls. 


The discovery of these curious verses seems to prove, to a certain ex- 
tent, the guilt of Théodore de Béze, who tried to mitigate the horror 
caused by this murder by turning it to ridicule. The principal merit of 
this song lay, it would appear, in the tune. 





THE EXILES. 


ALMAE SORORI. 


In the year 1308 few houses were yet standing on the island 
formed by the alluvium and sand deposited by the Seine 
above the city, behind the church of Notre-Dame. The first 
man who was so bold as to build on this strand, then liable to 
frequent floods, was a constable of the watch of the City of 
Paris, who had been able to do some service to their rever- 
ences the chapter of the cathedral; and in return the bishop 
leased to him twenty-five perches of land, with exemption 
from all feudal dues or taxes on the buildings he might erect. 

Seven years before the beginning of this narrative, Joseph 
Tirechair, one of the sternest of Paris constables, as his name 
[Tear Flesh] would indicate, had, thanks to his share of the 
fines collected by him for delinquencies committed within the 
precincts of the city, been able to build a house on the bank 
of the Seine just at the end of the Rue du Port-Saint-Landry. 
To protect the merchandise landed on the strand, the muni- 
cipality had constructed a sort of breakwater of masonry, 
which may still be seen on some old plans of Paris, and which 
preserved the piles of the landing-place by meeting the rush 
of water and ice at the upper end of the island. The con- 
stable had taken advantage of this for the foundation of his 
house,,so that there were several steps up to his door. 

Like all the houses of that date, this cottage was crowned 
by a peaked roof, forming a gable-end to the front, of halfa 
diamond. To the great regret of historians, but two or three 
examples of such roofs survive in Paris. A round opening 
gave light to a loft, where the constable’s wife dried the linen 
of the chapter, for she had the honor of washing for the cathe- 
dral—which was certainly not a bad customer. On the second 

(344) 


THE EXILES. 345 


floor were two rooms, let to lodgers at a rent, one year with 
another, of forty sous Parzsts* each, an exorbitant sum, that 
was however justified by the luxury Tirechair had lavished on 
their adornment. Flanders tapestry hung on the walls, and a 
large bed with a top valance of green serge, like a peasant’s 
bed, was amply furnished with mattresses, and covered with 
good sheets of fine linen. Each room had a stove called a 
chauffe-doux (heat for one); the floor, carefully polished by 
Dame Tirechair’s apprentices, shone like the woodwork of a 
shrine. Instead of stools, the lodgers had deep chairs of 
carved walnut, the spoils probably of some raided castle. Two 
chests with pewter mouldings, and tables on twisted legs, com- 
pleted the fittings, worthy of the most fastidious knights-ban- 
neret whom business might bring to Paris. 

The windows of those two rooms looked out on the river. 
From one you could only see the shores of the Seine and the 
three barren islands, of which two were subsequently joined 
. together to form the Ile Saint-Louis; the third was the Ile de 

Louviers. From the other could be seen, down a vista of the 
Port-Saint-Landry, the buildings on the Gréve, the bridge of 
Notre-Dame, with its houses, and the tall towers of the Louvre, 
but lately built by Philippe-Auguste to overlook the then poor 
and squalid town of Paris, which suggests so many imaginary 
marvels to the fancy of modern romancers. 

The first floor of Tirechair’s house consisted of a large hall, 

where his wife’s business was carried on, through which the 
lodgers were obliged to pass on their way to their own rooms 
‘up a Stairway like a mill-ladder. Behind this were a kitchen 
and a bedroom, with a view over the Seine. A tiny garden, 
reclaimed from the waters, displayed at the foot of this modest 
dwelling its beds of cabbages and onions, and a few rose- 
bushes, sheltered by palings, forming a sort of hedge. A little 
structure of lath and mud served as a kennel for a big dog, the 
indispensable guardian of so lonely a dwelling. Beyond this 


* A small Paris coin, or token. 


346 THE EXILES. 


kennel was a little plot, where the hens cackled whose eggs 
were sold to the canons. Here and there on this patch of 
earth, muddy or dry according to the whimsical Parisian 
weather, a few trees grew, constantly lashed by the wind, and 
teased and broken by the passer-by—willows, reeds, and tall 
grasses. 

The Eyot, the Seine, the landing-place, the house, were all 
overshadowed on the west by the huge basilica of Notre- 
Dame casting its cold gloom over the whole plot as the sun 
moved. Then, as now, there was not in all Paris a more de- 
serted spot, a more solemn or more melancholy prospect. The 
noise of waters, the chanting of priests, or the piping of the 
wind were the only sounds that disturbed this wilderness, where 
lovers would sometimes meet to discuss their secrets when the 
church-folk and clergy were safe in church at the services. 


One evening in Apri] in the year 1308, Tirechair came 
home in a remarkably bad temper. For three days past 
everything had been in good order on the King’s highway. 
Now, as an officer of the peace, nothing annoyed him so 
much as to feel himself useless. He flung down his halbert 
in a rage, muttered inarticulate words as he pulled off his 
doublet, half-red and half-blue, and slipped on a shabby 
camlet jerkin. After helping himself from the bread-box to 
a hunch of bread, and spreading it with butter, he seated 
himself on a bench, looked round at his four white-washed 
walls, counted the beams of the ceiling, made a mental 
inventory of the household goods hanging from the nails, 
scowled at the neatness which left him nothing to complain 
of, and looked at his wife, who said not a word as she ironed 
the albs and surplices from the sacristy. : 

‘By my halidom,’’ he said, to open the conversation, “I 
cannot think, Jacqueline, where you go to catch your appren- 
ticed maids. Now, here is one,’’ he went on, pointing to a 
girl who was folding an altar-cloth, clumsily enough, it must 


THE EXILES. 347 


be owned, ‘‘ who looks to me more like a damsel rather free 
of her person than a sturdy, country wench. Her hands are 
as white as a fine lady’s! By the mass! and her hair smells 
of essences, I verily believe, and her hose are as fine as a 
queen’s. By the two horns of Old Nick, matters please me 
but ill as I find them here.”’ 

The girl colored, and stole a look at Jacqueline, full of 
alarm not unmixed with pride. The mistress answered her 
glance with a smile, laid down her work, and turned to her 
husband. 

‘‘ Come now,”’ said she, in a sharp tone, ‘‘ you need not 
harry me. Are you going to accuse me next of some under- 
hand tricks? Patrol your roads as much as you please, but 
do not meddle here with anything but what concerns your 
sleeping in peace, drinking your wine, and eating what I set 
before you, or else, I warn you, I will have no more to do 
with keeping you healthy and happy. Let any one find mea 
happier man in all the town,”’ she went on, with a scolding 
grimace. ‘‘ He has silver in his purse, a gable over the Seine, 
a stout halbert on one hand, an honest wife on the other, a 
house as clean and smart as a new pin! And he growls like 
a pilgrim smarting from Saint Anthony’s fire !”’ 

‘¢ Hey-day!’’ exclaimed the sergeant of the watch, ‘‘ do 
you fancy, Jacqueline, that I have any wish to see my house 
razed down, my halbert given to another, and my wife stand- 
ing in the pillory?’’ 

Jacqueline and the dainty journeywoman turned pale. 

‘¢ Just tell me what you are driving at,’’ said the washer- 
woman sharply, ‘‘and make a clean breast of it. For some 
days, my man, I have observed that you have some maggot 
twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then, and have it all 
out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any 
harm when you have only to guard the common council 
and live under the protection of the chapter! Their rever- 
ences the canons would lay the whole bishopric under an 


348 THE EXILES. 


interdict if Jacqueline brought a complaint of the smallest 
damage.’’ 

As she spoke, she went straight up to her husband and 
took him by the arm. 

**Come with me,’’ she added, pulling him up and out on 
to the steps. 

When they were down by the water in their little garden, 
Jacqueline looked saucily in her husband’s face. 

‘‘T would have you to know, you old gaby, that when my 
lady fair goes out, a piece of gold comes into our savings-box.’’ 

‘*Oh, ho!”’ said the constable, who stood silent and medi- 
tative before his wife. But he presently said, ‘“‘ Any way, we 
are done for. What brings the dame to our house ?’”’ 

‘«She comes to see the well-favored young clerk who lives 
overhead,’’ replied Jacqueline, looking up at the window that 
opened on to the vast landscape of the Seine valley. 

‘‘The devil’s in it!’’ cried the man. ‘‘ For a few base 
crowns you have ruined me, Jacqueline. Is that an honest 
trade for a sergeant’s decent wife to ply? And, be she 
Countess or Baroness, the lady will not be able to get us out 
of the trap in which we shall find ourselves caught sooner or 
later. Shall we not have to square accounts with some puis- 
sant and offended husband? for, by the mass, she is fair to 
look upon!”’ 

‘¢ But she is a widow, I tell you, gray gander! How dare 
you accuse your wife of foul play and folly? And the lady 
has never spoken a word to yon gentle clerk; she is content 
to look on him and think of him. Poor lad! he would be 
dead of starvation by now but for her, for she is as good as a 
mother to him. And he, the sweet cherub! it is as easy to 
cheat him as to rock a new-born babe. He believes his pence 
will last for ever, and he has eaten them through twice over 
in the past six months.’’ 

‘‘Woman,”’ said the sergeant, solemnly pointing to the 
Place de Gréve, ‘‘do you remember seeing, even from this 


THE EXILES. 349 


spot, the fire in which they burnt the Danish woman the other 
day?” 

‘* When then ?”’ said Jacqueline, in a fright. 

‘*What then?’’ echoed Tirechair. ‘* Why, the two men 
who lodge with us smellof scorching, and neitherchapter nor 
Countess nor protector can serve them. Here is Easter come 
around ; the year is ending; we must turn our company out 
of doors, and that at once. Do you think you can teach an 
old constable how to know a gallows-bird? Our two lodgers 
were on terms with la Porette, that heretic jade from Denmark 
or Norway, whose last cries you heard from here. She was a 
brave witch ; she never blenched at the stake, which was proof 
enough of her compact with the devil. I saw her as plain as 
I see you; she preached to the throng, and declared she was 
in heaven and could see God. 

i: *€And since that, I tell you, I have never slept quietly in 
my bed. My lord, who lodges over us, is of a surety more of 
a wizard than a Christian. On my word as an officer, I shiver 
when that old man passes near me; he never sleeps of nights ; 
if I wake, his voice is ringing like a bourdon of bells, and I 
hear him uttering incantations in the language of hell. Have 
you ever seen him eat an honest crust of bread or a hearth- 
cake made by a good Catholic baker? His brown skin has 
been scorched and tanned by hell-fires. Marry, and I tell 
you his eyes hold a spell like those of serpents. Jacqueline, 
I will have none of those two men under my roof. I see too 
much of the law not to know that it is well to have nothing 
to do with it. Vou must get rid of our two lodgers; the 
elder, because I suspect him; the youngster, because he is too 
pretty. They neither of them seem to me to keep Christian 
company. ‘The boy is ever staring at the moon, the stars, 
and the clouds, like a wizard watching for the hour when he 
shall mount his broomstick; the other old rogue certainly 
makes some use of the poor boy for his black art. My house 
stands too close to the river as it is, and that risk of ruin is 


850 THE EXILES. 


bad enough without bringing down fire from heaven, or the 
love affairs of a countess. I have spoken. Do not rebel.’’ 

In spite of her sway inthe house, Jacqueline stood stupe- 
fied as she listened to the edict fulminated against his lodgers 
by the sergeant of the watch. She mechanically looked up 
at the window of the room inhabited by the old man, and 
shivered with horror as she suddenly caught sight of the 
gloomy, melancholy face, and the piercing eye that so af- 
fected her husband, accustomed as he was to dealing with 
criminals. 

At that period, great and small, priests and laymen, all 
trembled before the idea of any supernatural power. The 
word ‘‘ magic’’ was as powerful as leprosy to root up feelings, 
break social ties, and freeze pity in the most generous soul. 
- It suddenly struck the constable’s wife that she never, in fact, 
had seen either of her lodgers exercising any human function. 
Though the younger man’s voice was as sweet and melodious 
as the tones of a flute, she so rarely heard it that she was 
tempted to think his silence the result of a spell. As she 
recalled the strange beauty of that pink-and-white face, and 
saw in memory the fine fair hair and moist brilliancy of those 
eyes, she believed they were indeed the artifices of the devil. 
She remembered that for days at a time she had never heard 
the slightest sound from either room. Where were the stran- 
gers during all those hours ? 

Suddenly the most singular circumstances recurred to her 
mind. She was completely overmastered by fear, and could 
even discern witchcraft in the rich lady’s interest in this 
young Godefroid, a poor orphan who had come from Flan- 
ders to study at the University of Paris. She hastily put her 
hand into one of her pockets, pulled out four livres of Tour- 
nay in large silver coinage, and looked at the pieces with an 
expression of avarice mingled with terror. 

‘¢That, at any rate, is not false coin,’’ said she, showing 
the silver to her husband. ‘<< Beside,’’ she went on, ‘‘ how 


THE EXILES. 351 


can I turn them out after taking next year’s rent paid in ad- 
vance ?”’ 

‘* You had better inquire of the dean of the chapter,’’ re- 
plied Tirechair. ‘Is it not his business to tell us how we 
should deal with these extraordinary persons ?”’ 

‘Ay, truly extraordinary,’’ cried Jacqueline. ‘To think 
of their cunning; coming here under the very shadow of 
Notre-Dame! Still,’’ she went on, ‘or ever I ask the dean, 
why not warn that fair and noble lady of the risk she 
runs?’’ 

As she spoke, Jacqueline went into the house with her 
husband, who had not missed a mouthful. Tirechair, as a 
man grown old in the tricks of his trade, affected to believe 
that the strange lady was in fact a work-girl; still, this as- 
sumed indifference could not altogether cloak the timidity of 
a courtier who respects a royal incognito. At this moment 
six was striking by the clock of Saint-Denis du Pas, a small 

_church that stood between Notre-Dame and the Port-Saint- 
Landry—the first church erected in Paris, on the very spot 
where Saint-Denis was laid on the gridiron, as chronicles tell. 
The hour flew from steeple to tower all over the city. Then 
suddenly confused shouts were heard on the left bank of the 
Seine, behind Notre-Dame, in the quarter where the schools 
of the University harbored their swarms. 

At this signal, Jacqueline’s elder lodger began to move 
about his room. The sergeant, his wife, and the strange lady 
listened while he opened and shut his door, and the old man’s 
heavy step was heard on the steep stair. The constable’s 
suspicions gave such interest to the advent of this personage 
that the lady was startled as she observed the strange expres- 
sion of the two countenances before her. Referring the 
terrors of this couple to the youth she was protecting—as 
was natural in a lover—the young lady awaited, with some 
uneasiness, the event thus heralded by the fears of her so- 
called master and mistress. 


352 THE EXILES. 


The old man paused for a moment on the threshold to 
scrutinize the three persons in the room, and seemed to be 
looking for his young companion. This glance of inquiry, 
unsuspicious as it was, agitated the three. Indeed, nobody, 
not even the stoutest man, could deny that nature had be- 
stowed exceptional powers on this being, who seemed almost 
supernatural. ‘Though his eyes were somewhat deeply shaded 
by the wide sockets fringed with long eyebrows, they were 
set, like a kite’s eyes, in eyelids so broad, and bordered by so 
dark a circle sharply defined on his cheek, that they seemed 
rather to be prominent. These singular eyes had in them 
something indescribably domineering and piercing, which 
took possession of the soul by a grave and thoughtful look, a 
look as bright and lucid as that of a serpent or a bird, but 
which held one fascinated and crushed by the swift com- 
munication of some tremendous sorrow, or of some super- 
human power. 

Every feature was in harmony with this eye of lead and of 
fire, at once rigid and flashing, stern and calm. While in 
this eagle eye earthly emotions seemed in some sort extinct, 
the lean, parched face also bore traces of unhappy passions 
and great deeds done. The nose, which was narrow and 
aquiline, was so long that it seemed to hang on by the nos- 
trils. The bones of the face were strongly marked by the 
long, straight wrinkles that furrowed the hollow cheeks. 
Every line in the countenance looked dark. It would sug- 
gest the bed of a torrent where the violence of former floods 
was recorded in the depth of the water-courses, which testified 
to some terrible, unceasing turmoil. Like the ripples left by 
the oars of a boat:on the waters, deep lines, starting from each 
side of his nose, marked his face strongly, and gave an expres- 
sion of bitter sadness to his mouth, which was firm and straight- 
lipped. Above the storm thus stamped on his countenance, 
his calm brow rose with what may be called boldness, and 
crowned it as with a marble dome. 


THE EXILES. 353 


The stranger preserved that intrepid and dignified manner 
that is frequently habitual with men inured to disaster, and 
fitted by nature to stand unmoved before a turious mob and 
to face the greatest dangers. He seemed to move in a sphere 
apart, where he poised above humanity. His gestures, no less 
than his look, were full of irresistible power; his lean hands 
were those of a soldier; and if your own eyes were forced to 
fall before his piercing gaze, you were no less sure to tremble 
when by word or action he spoke to your soul. He moved in 
silent majesty that made him seem a king without his guard, 
a god without his rays. 

His dress emphasized the ideas suggested by the peculiari- 
ties of his mien and face. Soul, body, and garb were in har- 
mony, and calculated to impress the coldest imagination. He 
wore a sort of sleeveless gown of black cloth, fastened in front, 
and falling to the calf, leaving the neck bare with no collar. 
His doublet and boots were likewise black. On his head was 

_a black velvet cap like a priest’s, sitting in a close circle above 
his forehead, and not showing a single hair. It was the 
strictest mourning, the gloomiest habit a man could wear. 
But for a long sword that hung by his side from a leather belt 
which could be seen where his surcoat hung open, a priest 
would have hailed him as a brother. Though of no more than 
middle height, he appeared tall; and, looking him in the face, 
he seemed a giant. 

‘¢ The clock has struck, the boat is waiting ; will you not 
come ?”’ 

At these words, spoken in bad French, but distinctly 
audible in the silence, a little noise was heard in the other 
top room, and the young man came down as lightly as a 
bird. 

When Godefroid appeared the lady’s face turned crimson; 
she trembled, started, and covered her face with her white 
hands. 

Any woman might have shared her agitation at the sight of 

23 


$54 THE EXILES. 


this youth of about twenty, of a form and stature so slender 
that at a first glance he might have been taken for a mere 
boy, or a young girl in disguise. His black cap—like the 
beret worn by the Basque people—showed a brow as white as 
snow, where grace and innocence shone with an expression of 
divine sweetness—the light of a soul full of faith. A poet’s 
fancy would have seen there the star which, in some old tale, 
a mother entreats the fairy godmother to set on the forehead 
of an infant abandoned, like Moses, to the waves. Love 
lurked in the thousand fair curls that fell over his shoulders. 
His throat, truly a swan’s throat, was white and exquisitely 
round. His blue eyes, bright and liquid, mirrored the sky. 
His features and the mould of his brow were refined and deli- 
cate enough to enchant a painter. The bloom of beauty, 
which in a woman’s face causes men such indescribable de- 
light, the exquisite purity of outline, the halo of light that 
bathes the features we love, were here combined with a mas- 
culine complexion, and with strength as yet but half devel- 
oped, in the most enchanting contrast. His was one of those 
melodious countenances which, even when silent, speak and 
attract us. And yet, on marking it attentively, the incipient 
blight might have been detected which comes of a great 
thought or a passion, the faint yellow tinge that made him 
seem like a young leaf opening to the sun. 

No contrast could be greater or more startling than that 
seen in the companionship of these two men. It was like 
seeing a frail and graceful shrub that has grown from the 
hollow trunk of some gnarled willow, withered by age, blasted 
by lightning, standing decrepit; one of those majestic trees 
that painters love; the trembling sapling takes shelter there 
from storms. One was a god, the other was an angel; one 
the poet that feels, the other the poet that expresses—a prophet 
in sorrow, a Levite in prayer. 

They went out together without speaking. 

‘¢ Did you mark how he called him to him?”’ cried the 


THE EXILES. 355 


sergeant of the watch when the footsteps of the couple were no 
longer audible on the strand. ‘‘Are they not a demon and 
his familiar ?”’ 

‘*Phooh!’’ puffed Jacqueline. ‘‘I felt smothered! I 
never marked our two lodgers so carefully. ’Tis a bad thing 
for us women that the devil can wear so faira mien !’’ 

*‘Ay, cast some holy water on him,’’ said Tirechair, ‘‘ and 
you will see him turn into a toad. I am off to tell the office 
all about them.”’ 

On hearing this speech the lady roused herself from the 
reverie into which she had sunk and looked at the constable, 
who was donning his red-and-blue jacket. 

‘¢ Whither are you off ?’’ she asked. 

‘*To tell the justices that wizards are lodging in our house 
very much against our will.’’ 

The lady smiled. 

‘J,’ said she, ‘‘am the Comtesse de Mahaut,’’ and she 
rose with a dignity that took the man’s breath away. ‘‘ Be- 
- ware of bringing the smallest trouble on your guests. Above 
all, respect the old man; I have seen him in the company of 
your lord the King, who entreated him courteously; you 
will be ill-advised to trouble him in any way. As to my 
having been here—never breathe a word of it, as you value 
your life.”’ 

She said no more, but relapsed into thought. 

Presently she looked up, signed to Jacqueline, and together 
they went up into Godefroid’s room. The fair Countess 
looked at the bed, the carved chairs, the chest, the tapestry, 
the table, with a joy like that of the exile who sees on his 
return the crowded roofs of his native town nestling at the 
foot of a hill. 

‘If you have not deceived me,’’ said she to Jacqueline, 
‘¢T promise you a hundred crowns in gold.” 

‘‘ Behold,,madame,’’ said the woman, “the poor angel is 
confiding—here is all his treasure.” 


356 ‘THE EXILES. 


As she spoke, Jacqueline opened a drawer in the table and 
showed some parchments. 

‘God of mercy!’’ cried the Countess, snatching up a 
document that caught her eye, on which she read, Gothofredus 
Comes Gantiacus (Godefroid, Count of Ghent). 

She dropped the parchment, and passed her hand over her 
brow ; then, feeling, no doubt, that she had compromised 
herself by showing so much emotion, she recovered her cold 
demeanor. 

‘* T am satisfied,’’ said she. 

She went downstairs and out of the house. The constable 
and his wife stood in their doorway, and saw her take the 
path to the landing-place. 

A boat was moored hard by. When the rustle of the 
Countess’ approach was audible, a boatman suddenly stood 
up, helped the fair laundress to take her seat in it, and rowed 
with such strength as to make the boat fly like a swallow 
down the stream. 

‘* You are a sorry fellow,’’ said Jacqueline, giving the officer’s 
shoulder a familiar slap. ‘‘ We have earned a hundred gold 
crowns this morning.”’ 

‘‘T like harboring lords no better than harboring wizards. 
And I know not, of the two, which is the more like to bring 
us to the gallows,’’ replied Tirechair, taking up his halbert. 
‘¢T will go my rounds over by Champfleuri ; God protect us, 
and send me to meet some pert jade out in her bravery of 
gold rings to glitter in the shade like a glow-worm!”’ 

Jacqueline, alone in the house, hastily went up to the un- 
known lord’s room to discover, if she could, some clue to this 
mysterious business. Like some learned men who give them- 
selves infinite pains to complicate the clear and simple laws 
of nature, she had already invented a chaotic romance to 
account for the meeting of these three persons under her 
humble roof. She hunted through the chest, examined every- 
thing, but could find nothing extraordinary. She saw nothing 


THE EXILES. 357 


on the table but a writing-case and some sheets of parchment ; 
and as she could not read, this discovery told her nothing. 
A woman’s instinct then took her into the young man’s room, 
and from thence she descried her two lodgers crossing the 
river in the ferry-boat. 

‘‘ They stand like two statues,’’ said she to herself. ¢ Ah, 
ha! They are landing at the Rue du Fouarre. How nimble 
he is, the sweet youth! He jumped out like a bird. By him 
the old man looks like some stone saint in the cathedral. 
They are going to the old school of the Four Nations. 
Presto! they are out of sight. And this is where he lives, 
poor cherub!’’ she went on, looking about the room. ‘ How 
smart and winning he is! Ah! your fine gentry are made of 
other stuff than we are.’’ 

And Jacqueline went down again after smoothing the bed- 
coverlet, dusting the chest, and wondering for the hundredth 
time in six months— 

‘* What in the world does he do all the blessed day? He 
cannot always be staring at the blue sky and the stars that 
God has hung up there like lanterns. That dear boy has 
known trouble. But why do he and the old man hardly ever 
speak to each other ?’’ 

Then she lost herself in wonderment and in thoughts which, 
in her addled woman’s brain, were tangled like a skein of 
silken thread. 

The old man and his young companion had gone into one 
of the schools for which the Rue du Fouarre was at that time 
famous throughout Europe. At the moment when Jacqueline’s 
two lodgers arrived at the old school des Quatre Nations, the 
celebrated Sigier, the most noted Doctor of Mystical The- 
ology of the University of Paris, was mounting his pulpit in 
a spacious, low room on a level with the street. The cold 
stones were strewn with clean straw, on which several of his 
disciples knelt on one knee, writing on the other, to enable 
them to take notes from the Master’s improvised discourse, in 


358 THE EXILES. 


the shorthand abbreviations which are the despair of modern 
decipherers. 

The hall was full, not of students only, but of the most dis- 
tinguished men belonging to the clergy, the Court, and the 
legal faculty. There were some learned foreigners, too— 
soldiers and rich citizens. ‘The broad faces were there, with 
prominent brows and venerable beards, which fill us with a 
sort of pious respect for our ancestors when we see their por- 
traits from the Middle Ages. Lean faces, too, with burning, 
sunken eyes, under bald heads yellow from the labors of futile 
scholasticism, contrasted with young and eager countenances, 
grave faces, warlike faces, and the ruddy cheeks of the finan- 
cial class. 

These lectures, dissertations, theses, sustained by the 
brightest geniuses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
roused our forefathers to enthusiasm. ‘They were to them 
their bull-fights, their Italian opera, their tragedy, their dan- 
cers; in short, all their drama. The performance of Mys- 
teries* was a later thing than these spiritual disputations, to 
which, perhaps, we owe the French stage. Inspired eloquence, 
combining the attractions of the human voice skillfully used, 
with daring inquisition into the secrets of God, sufficed to 
satisfy every form of curiosity, appealed to the soul, and con- 
stituted the fashionable entertainment of the time. Not only 
did theology include the other sciences, it was science itself, 
as grammar was science to the ancient Greeks ; and those who 
distinguished themselves in these duels, in which the orators, 
like Jacob, wrestled with the Spirit of God, had a promising 
future before them. Embassies, arbitrations between sov- 
ereigns, chancellorships, and ecclesiastical dignities were the 
meed of men whose rhetoric had been schooled in theological 
controversy. The professor’s chair was the tribune of the 
period. 

This system lasted till the day when Rabelais gibbeted 


* A rude drama: The passion play, at Ober-Ammergau, is a survival. 


LTHE EXILES. 359 


dialectics by his merciless satire, as Cervantes demolished 
chivalry by a narrative-comedy. 

To understand this amazing period and the spirit which 
dictated its voluminous, though now forgotten, masterpieces, 
to analyze it, even to its barbarisms, we need only examine 
the constitutions of the University of Paris and the extraor- 
dinary scheme of instruction that then obtained. Theology 
was taught under two faculties—that of Theology properly so 
called, and that of Canon Law. The faculty of Theology, 
again, had three sections—Scholastic, Canonical, and Mystic. 
It would be wearisome to give an account of the attributes of 
each section of the science, since one only, namely, Mystic, 
is the subject of this Zvude (study). 

Mystical Theology included the whole of Divine Revelation 
and the elucidation of the Mysteries. And this branch of 
ancient theology has been secretly preserved with reverence 
even to our own day; Jacob Boehm, Swedenborg, Martinez 
Pasqualis, Saint-Martin, Molinos, Madame Guyon, Madame 
Bourignon, and Madame Krudener, the extensive sect of the 
Ecstatics, and that of the Illuminati, have at different periods 
duly treasured the doctrines of this science, of which the aim 
is indeed truly startling and portentous. In Doctor Sigier’s 
day, as in our own, man has striven to gain wings to fly into 
the sanctuary where God hides from our gaze. 

This digression was necessary to give a clue to the scene 
at which the old man and the youth from the island under 
Notre-Dame had come to be audience; it will also protect 
this narrative from all blame on the score of falsehood and 
hyperbole, of which certain persons of hasty judgment might 
perhaps suspect me. 

Doctor Sigier was a tall man in the prime of life. His 
face, rescued from oblivion by the archives of the University, 
had singular analogies with that of Mirabeau. It was stamped 
with the seal of fierce, swift, and terrible eloquence. But the 
doctor bore on his brow the expression of religious faith that 


360 THE EXILES. 


his modern double had not. His voice, too, was of persuasive 
sweetness, with a clear and pleasing ring in it. 

At this moment the daylight, that was stintingly diffused 
through the small, heavily-leaded window-panes, tinted the 
assembly with capricious tones and powerful contrasts from 
the checkered light and shade. Here, in a dark corner, eyes 
shone brightly, their dark heads under the sunbeams gleamed 
light above faces in shadow, and various bald heads, with 
only a circlet of white hair, were distinguished among the 
crowd like battlements silvered by moonlight. Every face 
was turned toward the doctor, mute but impatient. The 
drowsy voices of other lecturers in the adjoining schools were 
audible in the silent street like the murmuring of the sea; and 
the steps of the two strangers, as they now came in, attracted 
general attention. Doctor Sigier, ready to begin, saw the 
stately senior standing, looked round for a seat for him, and 
then finding none, as the place was full, came down from his 
place, went to the new-comer, and, with great respect, led 
him to the platform of his professor’s chair, and there gave 
him his stool to sit upon. The assembly hailed this mark of 
deference with a murmur of approval, recognizing the old man 
as the orator of a fine thesis admirably argued not long since 
at the Sorbonne, 

The stranger looked down from his raised position on the 
crowd below with that deep glance that held a whole poem of 
sorrow, and those who met his eyes felt an indescribable 
thrill. The lad, following the old man, sat down on one of 
the steps, leaning against the pulpit in a graceful and melan- 
choly attitude. The silence was now profound, and the door- 
way and even the street were blocked by scholars who had 
deserted the other classes. 

Doctor Sigier was to-day to recapitulate, in the last of a 
series of discourses, the views he had set forth in the former 
lectures on the Resurrection, Heaven, and Hell. His strange 
doctrine responded to the sympathies of the time, and grati- 


THE EXILES. 361 


fied the immoderate love of the marvelous, which haunts the 
mind of man in every age. This effort of man to clutch the 
infinite, which for ever slips through his ineffectual grasp, this 
last tourney of thought against thought was a task worthy of 
an assembly where the brightest luminaries of the age had 
met, and where the most stupendous human imagination ever 
known, perhaps, at that moment shone. 

The doctor began by summing up in a mild and even tone 
the principal points he had so far established : 


‘*No intellect was the exact counterpart of another. Had 
man any right to require an account of his Creator for the 
inequality of powers bestowed on each? Without attempting 
to penetrate rashly into the designs of God, ought we not to 
recognize the fact that by reason of their general diversity 
intelligences could be classed in spheres? From the sphere 
where the least degree of intelligence gleamed, to the most 
translucent souls who could see the road by which to ascend 
to God, was there not an ascending scale of spiritual gift ? 
And did not spirits of the same sphere understand each other 
like brothers in soul, in flesh, in mind, and in feeling?” 


From this the doctor went on to unfold the most wonderful 
theories of sympathy. He set forth in Biblical language the 
phenomena of love, of instinctive repulsion, of strong affini- 
ties which transcend the laws of space, of the sudden min- 
gling of souls which seem to recognize each other. With 
regard to the different degrees of strength of which our affec- 
tions are capable, he accounted for them by the place, more 
or less near the centre, occupied by beings in their respective 
circles. 

He gave mathematical expression to God’s grand idea in 
the codrdination of the various human spheres. ‘* Through 
man,’’ he said, ‘‘ these spheres constituted a world interme- 
diate between the intelligence of the brute and the intelli- 


362 THE EXILES. 


gence of the angels.’’ As he stated it, the divine Word 
nourishes the spiritual Word, the spiritual Word nourishes 
the living Word, the living Word nourishes the animal Word, 
the animal Word nourishes the vegetable Word, and the vege- 
table Word is the expression of the life of the barren Word. 
These successive evolutions, as of a chrysalis, which God thus 
wrought in our souls, this infusorial life, so to speak, com- 
municated from each zone to the next, more vivid, more 
spiritual, more perceptive in its ascent, represented, rather 
dimly no doubt, but marvelously enough to his inexperienced 
hearers, the impulse given to nature by the Almighty. Sup- 
ported by many texts from the Sacred Scriptures, which he 
used as a commentary on his own statements to express by con- 
crete images the abstract arguments he felt to be wanting, he 
flourished the Spirit of God like a torch over the deep secrets 
of creation, with an eloquence peculiar to himself, and ac- 
cents that urged conviction on his audience. As he unfolded 
his mysterious system and all its consequences, he gave a key 
to every symbol and justified the vocation, the special gifts, 
the genius, the talent ef each human being. 

Then, instinctively becoming physiological, he remarked on 
the resemblance to certain animals stamped on some human 
faces, accounting for them by primordial analogies and the 
upward tendency of all creation. He showed his audience 
the workings of nature, and assigned a mission and a future 
to minerals, plants, and animals. Bible in hand, after thus 
spiritualizing Matter and materializing Spirit, after pointing 
to the Will of God in all things, and enjoining respect for 
His smallest works, he suggested the possibility of rising by 
faith from sphere to sphere. 

This was the first portion of his discourse, and, by adroit 
digressions, he applied the doctrine of his system to feudalism. 
The poetry—religious and profane—and the abrupt eloquence 
of that period had a grand opening in this vast theory, wherein 
the doctor had amalgamated all the philosophical systems of 


THE EXILES. 363 


the ancients, and from which he brought them out again classi- 
fied, transfigured, purified. The false dogmas of two adverse 
principles and of Pantheism were demolished at his word, 
which proclaimed the Divine Unity, while ascribing to God 
and His angels the knowledge, the ends to which the means 
shone resplendent to the eyes of man. Fortified by the dem- 
onstrations that proved the existence of the world of Matter, 
Doctor Sigier constructed the scheme of a spiritual world 
dividing us from God by an ascending scale of spheres, just 
as the plant is divided from man by an infinite number of 
grades. He peopled the heavens, the stars, the planets, the 
sun. 

Quoting Saint Paul, he invested man with a new power; 
he might rise, from globe to globe, to the very Font of eternal 
life. Jacob’s mystical ladder was both the religious formula 
and the traditional proof of the fact. He soared through 
space, carrying with him the passionate souls of his hearers 
on the wings of his word, making them feel the infinite, and 
bathing them in the heavenly sea. Then the doctor ac- 
counted logically for hell by circles placed in inverse order to 
the shining spheres that lead to God, in which torments and 
darkness take the place of the Spirit and of light. Pain was 
as intelligible as rapture. The terms of the comparison were 
present in the conditions of human life and its various atmos- 
pheres of suffering and of intellect. Thus the most extra- 
ordinary traditions of hell and purgatory were quite naturally 
conceivable. 

He gave the fundamental rationale of virtue with admirable 
clearness. A pious man, toiling onward in poverty, proud of 
his good conscience, at peace with himself, and steadfastly 
true to himself in his heart in spite of the spectacle of exultant 
vice, was a fallen angel doing penance, who remembered his 
origin, foresaw his guerdon, accomplished his task, and obeyed 
his glorious mission. The sublime resignation of Christians 
was then seen in all its glory. He depicted martyrs at the 


364 THE EXILES. 


burning stake, and almost stripped them of their merit by 
stripping them of their sufferings. He showed their inner 
angel as dwelling in the heavens, while the outer man was 
tortured by the executioner’s sword. He described angels 
dwelling among men, and gave tokens by which to recognize 
them. 

He next strove to drag from the very depths of man’s under- 
standing the real sense of the word fall, which occurs in every 
language. He appealed to the most widely spread traditions 
in evidence of this one true origin, explaining, with much 
lucidity, the passion all men have for rising, mounting—an 
instinctive ambition, the perennial revelation of our destiny. 

He displayed the whole universe at a glance, and described 
the nature of God Himself circulating in a full tide from the 
centre to the extremities, and from the extremities to the 
centre again. Nature was one and homogeneous. In the 
most seemingly trivial, as in the most stupendous work, 
everything obeyed that law; each created object reproduced 
in little an exact image of that nature—the sap in the plant, 
the blood in man, the orbits of the planets. He piled proof 
on proof, always completing his idea by a picture musical with 
poetry. 

And he boldly anticipated every objection. He thundered 
forth an eloquent challenge to the monumental works of sci- 
ence and human excrescences of knowledge, such as those 
which societies use the elements of the earthly globe to pro- 
duce. He asked whether our wars, our disasters, our de- 
pravity could hinder the great movement given by God to all 
the globes; and he laughed human impotence to scorn by 
pointing to their efforts everywhere in ruins. He cried upon 
the names of Tyre, Carthage, and Babylon; he called upon 
Babel and Jerusalem to appear; and sought, without finding 
them, the transient furrows made by the ploughshare of civili- 
zation. Humanity floated on the surface of the earth as a ship 
whose wake is lost on the calm level of ocean. 


THE EXILES. 365 


These were the fundamental notions set forth in Doctor 
Sigier’s address, all wrapped in the mystical language and 
strange school-Latin of the time. He had made a special 
study of the Scriptures, and they supplied him with the 
weapons with which he came before his contemporaries to 
hasten their progress. He hid his boldness under his immense 
learning, as with a cloak, and his philosophical bent under a 
saintly life. At this moment, after bringing his hearers face 
to face with God, after packing the universe into an idea, and 
almost unveiling the idea of the world, he gazed down on the 
silent, throbbing mass, and scrutinized the stranger with a 
look. Then, spurred on, no doubt, by the presence of this 
remarkable personage, he added these words, from which I 
have eliminated the corrupt Latinity of the Middle Ages: 

‘¢ Where, think you, may a man find these fruitful truths if 
not in the heart of God Himself? What amI? The humble 
interpreter of a single line left to us by the greatest of the 
Apostles—a single line out of thousands all equally full of 
light. Before us, Saint Paul said, ‘/z Deo vivimus movemur 
et sumus.’ In our day less believing and more learned, or 
better instructed and more skeptical, we should ask the 
Apostle, ‘To what end this perpetual motion? Whither 
leads this life divided into zones? Wherefore an intelligence 
that begins with the obscure perfection of marble and pro- 
ceeds from sphere to sphere up to man, up to the angel, up to 
God? Where is the Font, where is the ocean, if life, attain- 
ing to God across worlds and stars, through Matter and Spirit, 
has to come down again to some other goal ?’ 

‘¢ You desire to see both aspects of the universe at once. 
You would adore the Sovereign on condition of being suf- 
fered to sit for an instant on His throne. Mad fools that we 
are! We will not admit that the most intelligent animals 
are able to understand our ideas and the object of our actions; 
we are merciless to the creatures of the inferior spheres, and 
exile them from our own; we deny them the faculty of divin- 


366 THE EXILES. 


ing human thoughts, and yet we ourselves would fain master 
the highest of all ideas—the Idea of the Idea! 

‘‘ Well, go then, start! Fly by faith up from globe to 
globe, soar through space! Thought, love, and faith are its 
mystical keys. ‘Traverse the circles, reach the throne! God 
is more merciful than you are; He opens His Temple to all 
His creatures. Only, do not forget the pattern of Moses: 
put your shoes from off your feet, cast off all filth, leave your 
body far behind ; otherwise you shall be consumed ; for God 
—God is Light!’ 

Just as Doctor Sigier spoke these grand words, his face 
radiant, his hand uplifted, a sunbeam pierced through an open 
window, like a magic jet from a font of splendor, a long 
triangular shaft of gold that lay like a scarf over the whole 
assembly. They all clapped their hands, for the audience 
accepted this effect of the sinking sun asa miracle. There 
was a universal cry of— 

‘‘Vivat ! Vivat /’’ (Bravo! Bravo!) 

The very sky seemed to shed approval. Godefroid, struck 
with reverence, looked from the old man to Doctor Sigier ; 
they were talking together in an undertone. 

‘¢ All honor to the master!’’ said the stranger. 

‘¢ What is such transient honor?’’ replied Sigier. 

‘¢T would I could perpetuate my gratitude,’’ said the older 
man. 

‘¢ A line written by you is enough!”’ said the doctor ‘It 
would give me immortality, humanly speaking.”’ 

“¢Can I give what I have not?”’ cried the elder. 

Escorted by the crowd, which followed in their footsteps, 
like courtiers around a king, at a respectful distance, Gode- 
froid, with the old man and the doctor, made their way to 
the oozy shore, where as yet there were no houses, and where 
the ferryman was waiting for them. The doctor and the 
stranger were talking together, not in Latin nor in any Gallic 
tongue, but in an unknown language, and very gravely. They 


THE EXILES. 367 


pointed with their hands now to heaven and now to the earth. 
Sigier, to whom the paths by the river were familiar, guided, 
the venerable stranger with particular care to the narrow 
planks which here and there bridged the mud; the following 
watched them inquisitively; and some of the students envied 
the privileged boy who might walk with these two great mas- 
ters of speech. Finally, the doctor took leave of the stranger, 
and the ferry-boat pushed off. 

At the moment when the boat was afloat on the wide river, 
communicating its motion to the soul, the sun pierced the 
clouds like a conflagration blazing up on the horizon, and 
poured forth a flood of light, coloring slate roof-tops and 
humbler thatch with a ruddy glow and tawny reflections, 
fringed Philippe Auguste’s towers with fire, flooded the sky, 
dyed the waters, gilded the plants, and aroused the half- 
sleeping insects. The immense shaft of light set the clouds 
on fire. It was like the last verse of the dailyhymn. Every 
heart was thrilled ; nature in such a moment is sublime. 

As he gazed at the spectacle, the stranger’s eyes moistened 
with the tenderest of human tears: Godefroid, too, was weep- 
ing; his trembling hand touched that of the elder man, who, 
looking round, confessed his emotion. But thinking his dig- 
nity as a man compromised, no doubt, to redeem it, he said in 
a deep voice— 

‘¢T weep for my native land. Iam an exile! Young man, 
in such an hour as this I left my home. There, at this hour, 
the fireflies are coming out of their fragile dwellings and 
clinging like diamond sparks to the leaves of the iris. At 
this hour the breeze, as sweet as the sweetest poetry, rises up 
from a valley bathed in light, bearing on its wings the richest 
fragrance. On the horizon I could see a golden city like the 
heavenly Jerusalem—a city whose name I may not speak. 
There, too, a river winds. But that city and its buildings, 
that river of which the lovely vistas, and the pools of blue 
water, mingled, crossed, and embraced each other, which 


368 THE EXILES, 


gladdened my sight and filled me with love—where are 
they P 

‘«* At that hour the waters assumed fantastic hues under the 
sunset sky, and seemed to be painted pictures; the stars 
dropped tender streaks of light, the moon spread its pleasing 
snares; it gave another life to the trees, to the color and 
form of things, and a new aspect to the sparkling water, the 
silent hills, the eloquent buildings. The city spoke, it glit- 
tered, it called to me to return ! 

*«Columns of smoke rose up by the side of the ancient pil- 
lars, whose marble sheen gleamed white through the night ; 
the lines of the horizon were still visible through the mists of 
evening ; all was harmony and mystery. Nature would not 
say farewell; she desired to keep me there. Ah! It was all 
in all to me; my mother and my child, my wife and my 
glory! The very bells bewailed my condemnation. Oh, 
land of marvels! It is as beautiful as heaven. From that 
hour the wide world has been my dungeon. Beloved land, 
why hast thou rejected me? 

‘¢ But I shall triumph there yet !’’ ‘he cried, speaking with 
an accent of such intense conviction and such a ringing tone, 
that the boatman started as at a trumpet call. 

The stranger was standing in a prophetic attitude and gaz- 
ing southward into the blue, pointing to his native home 
across the skyey regions. The ascetic pallor of his face had 
given place to a glow of triumph, his eyes flashed, he was as 
grand as a lion shaking his mane. 

‘¢ But you, poor child,’’ he went on, looking at Godefroid, 
whose cheeks were beaded with glittering tears, ‘* have you, 
like me, studied life from blood-stained pages? What can 
you have to weep for, at your age ?’”’ 

** Alas!’’ said Godefroid, ‘‘ I regret a land more beautiful 
than any land on earth—a land I never saw and yet remember. 
Oh, if I could but cleave the air on beating wings, I would 
fly——’”’ 


THE EXILES. 369 


‘*Whither?’’ asked the exile. 

‘*Up there,’’ replied the boy. 

On hearing this answer, the stranger seemed surprised ; he 
looked darkly at the youth, who remained silent. They 
seemed to communicate by an unspeakable effusion of the 
spirit, hearing each other’s yearnings in the teeming silence, 
and going forth side by side, like two doves sweeping the air 
on equal wing, till the boat touching the strand of the island, 
roused them from their deep reverie. 

Then, each lost in thought, they went together to the ser- 
geant’s house. 

‘And so the boy believes that he is an angel exiled from 
heaven !’’ thought the tall stranger. ‘* Which of us all has a 
right to undeceive him? Not I—I, who am so often lifted 
by some magic spell so far above the earth; I who am dedi- 
cate to God; I who am a mystery to myself. Have I not 
already seen the fairest of the angels dwelling in this mire ? 

_Is this child more or less crazed than Iam? Has he taken a 
bolder step in the way of faith? He believes, and his belief 
no doubt will lead him into some path of light like that in 
which I walk. But though he is as beautiful as an angel, is 
he not too feeble to stand fast in such a struggle ?’”’ 

Abashed by the presence of his companion, whose voice of 
thunder expressed to him his own thoughts, as lightning ex- 

"presses the will of heaven, the boy was satisfied to gaze at the 

stars with a lover’s eyes. Overwhelmed by a luxury of senti- 
ment, which weighed on his heart, he stood there timid and 
weak—a midge in the sunbeams. Sigier’s discourse had 
proved to them the mysteries of the spiritual world ; the tall, 
old man was to invest them with glory; the lad felt them in 
himself, though he could in no way express them. The 
three represented in living embodiment Science, Poetry, and 
Feeling. 


On going into the house, the Exile shut himself into his 
24 


370 THE EXILES. 


room, lighted the inspiring lamp, and gave himself over to 
the ruthless demon of Work, seeking words of the silence 
and ideas of the night. Godefroid sat down on his window- 
sill, by turns gazing at the moon reflected in the water, and 
studying the mysteries of the sky. Lost in one of the trances 
that were frequent with him, he traveled from sphere to 
sphere, from vision to vision, listening for obscure rustlings 
and the voices of angels, and believing that he heard them; 
seeing, or fancying that he saw, a divine radiance in which 
he lost himself; striving to attain the far-away goal, the 
source of all light, the font of all harmony. 

Presently the vast clamor of Paris, brought down on the 
current, was hushed ; lights were extinguished one by one in 
the houses; silence spread over all; and the huge city slept 
like a tired giant. 

Midnight struck. The least noise, the fall of a leaf, or 
the flight of a jackdaw changing its perching-place among the 
pinnacles of Notre-Dame, would have been enough to’ bring 
the stranger’s mind to earth again, to have made the youth 
drop from the celestial heights to which his soul had soared 
on the wings of rapture. 

And then the old man heard with dismay a groan mingling 
with the sound of a heavy fall—the fall, as his experienced 
ear assured him, of a dead body. He hastened into Gode- 
froid’s room, and saw him lying in a heap with a long rope 
tight round his neck, the end meandering over the floor. 

When he had untied it, the poor lad opened his eyes. 

‘* Where am I?”’ he asked with a hopeful gleam. 

‘In your own room,” said the older man, looking with 
surprise at Godefroid’s neck, and at the nail to which the 
cord had been tied, and which was still in the knot. 

‘In heaven ?’’ said the boy, in a voice of music. 

‘“No; on earth! ”’ 

Godefroid rose and walked along the path of light traced 
on the floor by the moon through the window, which stood 


THE EXILES. 371 


open; he saw the rippling Seine, the willows and plants on 
the island. A misty atmosphere hung over the waters like 
a smoky floor. 

On seeing the view, to him so heartbreaking, he folded 
his hands over his bosom, and stood in an attitude of despair ; 
the Exile came up to him with astonishment on his face. 

‘¢You meant to kill yourself?’’ he asked. 

“* Yes,’’ replied Godefroid, while the stranger passed his 
hand about his neck again and again to feel the place where 
the rope had tightened on it. 

But for some slight bruises, the young man had been but 
little hurt. His friend supposed that the nail had given way 
at once under the weight of the body, and the terrible at- 
tempt had ended in a fall without injury. 

‘¢ And why, dear lad, did you try to kill yourself? ”’ 

‘* Alas!’’ said Godefroid, no longer restraining the tears 
that rolled down his cheeks, ‘‘I heard the Voice from on 
_high; it called me byname. It had never named me before, 
but this time it bade me to heaven! Oh, how sweet is that 
voice! As I could not fly to heaven,’’ he added artlessly, 
‘*T took the only way we know of going to God.’’ 

‘« My child! oh, sublime boy!’” cried the old man, throw- 
ing his arms round Godefroid, and clasping him to his heart. 
“¢ You are a poet; you can boldly ride the whirlwind! Your 
poetry does not proceed from your heart; your living, burn- 
ing thoughts, your creations, move and grow in your soul. 
Go, never reveal your ideas to the vulgar! Be at once the 
altar, the priest, and the victim! ’”’ 

‘You know heaven, do you not? You have seen those 
myriads of angels, white-winged, and holding golden sistrums, 
all soaring with equal flight toward the Throne, and you have 
often seen their pinions moving at the breath of God as the 
trees of the forest bow with one consent before the storm. 
Ah, how glorious is unlimited space! Tell me.’’ 

The stranger clasped Godefroid’s hand convulsively, and 


372 THE EXILES. 


they both gazed at the firmament, whence the stars seemed to 
shed gentle poetry which they could hear. 

“¢Oh, to see God!’’ murmured Godefroid. 

‘¢Child!’’ said the old man suddenly, in a sterner voice, 
‘* have you so soon forgotten the holy teaching of our good 
master, Doctor Sigier? In order to return—you to your 
heavenly home and I to my native land on earth—must we 
not obey the voice of God? We must walk on resignedly in 
the stony paths where His almighty finger points the way. 
Do not you quail at the thought of the danger to which you 
exposed yourself? Arriving there without being bidden, and 
saying, ‘Here lam!’ before your time, would you not have 
been cast back into a world beneath that where your soul now 
hovers? Poor outcast cherub! Should you not rather bless 
God for having suffered you to live in a sphere where you may 
hear none but heavenly harmonies? Are you not as pure as 
a diamond, as lovely as a flower? 

‘¢ Think what it is to know, like me, only the City of Sor- 
rows! Dwelling there, I have worn out my heart. To search 
the tombs for their horrible secrets ; to wipe hands steeped in 
blood, counting them over night after night, seeing them rise 
up before me imploring forgiveness which I may not grant; 
to mark the writhing of the assassin and the last shriek of his 
victim ; to listen to appalling noises and fearful silence, the 
silence of a father devouring his dead sons; to wonder at the 
laughter of the damned ; to look for some human form among 
the livid heaps wrung and trampled by crime; to learn words 
such as living men may not hear without dying; to call per- 
petually on the dead, and always to accuse and condemn! Is 
that living ?”’ 

“‘ Cease !’’ cried Godefroid ; ‘<I cannot see you or hear you 
any further! My reason wanders, my eyes are dim. You 
light a fire within me which consumes me.”’ 

“And yet I must go on!”’ said the senior, waving his hand 
with a strange gesture that worked on the youth like a spell. 


THE EXILES. 373 


For a moment the old man fixed Godefroid with his large, 
weary, lightless eyes ; then he pointed with one finger to the 
ground. A gulf seemed to open at his bidding. He re- 
mained standing in the doubtful light of the moon; it lent a 
glory to his brow which reflected an almost solar gleam. 
Though at first a somewhat disdainful expression lurked in the 
wrinkles of his face, his look presently assumed the fixity 
which seems to gaze on an object invisible to the ordinary 
organs of sight. His eyes, no doubt, were seeing then the 
remoter images which the grave has in store for us. 

Never, perhaps, had this man presented so grand an aspect. 
A terrible struggle was going on in his soul, and reacted on 
his outer frame; strong man as he seemed to be, he bent as a 
reed bows under the breeze that comes before a storm. Gode- 
froid stood motionless, speechless, spellbound ; some inex- 
plicable force nailed him to the floor; and, as happens when 
our attention takes us out of ourselves while watching a fire or 
a battle, he was wholly unconscious of his body. 

‘*Shall I tell you the fate to which you were hastening, 
poor angel of love? Listen! It has been given to me to see 
immeasurable space, bottomless gulfs in which all human crea- 
tions are swallowed up, the shoreless sea whither flows the vast 
stream of men and of angels. As I made my way through 
the realms of eternal torment, I was sheltered under the cloak 
of an immortal—the robe of glory due to genius, and which 
the ages hand on—TI, a frail mortal! When I wandered 
through the fields of light where the happy souls play, 
I was borne up by the love of a woman, the wings of 
an angel; resting on her heart, I could taste the ineffable. 
pleasures whose touch is more perilous to us mortals than are 
the torments of the worser world. 

‘© As I achieved my pilgrimage through the dark regions 
below I had mounted from torture to torture, from crime to 
crime, from punishment to punishment, from awful silence to 
heartrending cries, until I reached the uppermost circle of 


374 THE EXILES, 


Hell. Already, from afar, I could see the glory of Paradise 
shining at a vast distance; I was still in darkness, but on the 
borders of day. I flew, upheld by my Guide, borne along by 
a power akin to that which, during our dreams, wafts us to 
spheres invisible to the eye of the body. The halo that 
crowned our heads scared away the shades as we passed, like 
impalpable dust. Far above us the suns of all the worlds 
shone with scarce so much light as the twinkling fireflies of 
my native land. I was soaring toward the fields of air where, 
around about Paradise, the bodies of light are in closer array, 
where the azure is easy to pass through, where worlds innu- 
merable spring like flowers in a meadow. 

‘¢ There, on the last level of the circles where those phan- 
toms dwell that I had left behind me, like sorrows one would 
fain forget, I saw a vast shade. Standing in an attitude of 
aspiration, that soul looked eagerly into space; his feet were 
riveted by the will of God to the topmost point of the margin, 
and he remained for ever in the painful strain by which we 
project our purpose when we long to soar, as birds about to 
take wing. I saw the man; he neither looked at us nor heard 
us; every muscle quivered and throbbed; at each separate 
instant he seemed to feel, though he did not move, all the 
fatigue of traversing the infinite that divided him from Para- 
dise where, as he gazed steadfastly, he believed he had 
glimpses of a beloved image. At this last gate of Hell, as at 
the first, I saw the stamp of despair even in hope. The hap- 
less creature was so fearfully held by some unseen force that 
his anguish entered into my bones and froze my blood. I 
shrank closer to my Guide, whose protection restored me to 
peace and silence. 

‘* Suddenly the Shade gave a cry of joy—a cry as shrill as 
that of the mother bird that sees a hawk in the air or suspects 
its presence. We looked where he was looking, and saw, as 
it were, a sapphire, floating high up in the abyss of light. 
The glowing star fell with the swiftness of a sunbeam when it 


THE EXILES. 375 


flashes over the horizon in the morning and its first rays shoot 
across the world. The Splendor became clearer and grew 
larger; presently I beheld the cloud of glory in which the 
angels move—a shining vapor that emanates from their divine 
substance, and that glitters here and there like tongues of 
flame. A noble face, whose glory none may endure that have 
not won the mantle, the laurel, and the palm—the attribute 
of the Powers—rose above this cloud as white and pure as 
snow. It was Light within light. His wings as they waved 
shed dazzling ripples in the spheres through which he de- 
scended, as the glance of God pierces through the universe. 
At last I saw the archangel in all his glory. The flower of 
eternal beauty that belongs to the angels of the Spirit shone 
in him. In one hand he held a green palm branch, in the 
other a sword of flame: the palm to bestow on the pardoned 
soul, the sword to drive back all the hosts of Hell with one 
sweep. As he approached, the perfumes of Heaven fell upon 
us as dew. In the region where the archangel paused, the air 
took the hues of opal, and moved in eddies of which he was 
the centre. He paused, looked at the Shade, and said— 

‘¢ ¢ To-morrow.’ 

‘‘ Then he turned heavenward once more, spread his wings, 
and clove through space as a vessel cuts through the waves, 
hardly showing her white sails to the exiles left on some 
deserted shore. 

‘‘« The Shade uttered appalling cries, to which the damned 
responded from the lowest circle, the deepest in the immensity 
of suffering, to the more peaceful zone near the surface on 
which we were standing. This worst torment of all had 
appealed to all the rest. The turmoil was swelled by the roar 
of a sea of fire which formed a bass to the terrific harmony 
of endless millions of suffering souls. 

‘‘ Then suddenly the Shade took flight through the doleful 
city, and down to its place at the very bottom of Hell; but 
as suddenly it came up again, turned, soared through the 


376 THE EXILES. 


endless circles in every direction, as a vulture, confined for 
the first time in a cage, exhausts itself in vain efforts. The 
Shade was free to do this; he could wander through the zones 
of Hell—icy, fetid, or scorching—without enduring their 
pangs; he glided into that vastness as a sunbeam makes its 
way into the deepest dark. 

‘€¢God has not condemned him to any torment,’ said the 
Master, ‘ but not one of the souls you have seen suffering their 
various punishments would exchange his anguish for the hope 
that is consuming this soul.’ 

‘¢ And just then the Shade came back to us, brought thither 
by an irresistible force which condemned him to parch on the 
verge of Hell. My divine Guide, guessing my curiosity, 
touched the unhappy Shade with his palm-branch. He, who 
was perhaps trying to measure the age of sorrow that divided 
him from that ever-vanishing ‘To-morrow,’ started and gave a 
look full of all the tears he had already shed. 

*¢* You would know my woe?’ said he sadly. ‘Qh, I 
love to tell it. I am here, Teresa is above; that is all. On 
earth we were happy, we were always together. When I 
saw my loved Teresa Donati for the first time, she was ten 
years old. We loved each other even then, not knowing what 
love meant. Our lives were one; I turned pale if she were 
pale, I was happy in her joy; we gave ourselves up to the 
pleasure of thinking and feeling together ; and we learned 
what love was, each through the other. We were wedded at 
Cremona; we never saw each other’s lips but decked with the 
pearls of a smile; our eyes always shone; our hair, like our 
desires, flowed together; our heads were always bent over 
one book when we read, our feet walked in equal step. Life 
was one long kiss, our home was a nest. 

‘¢«QOne day, for the first time, Teresa turned pale and said, 
‘Tam in pain!’’ And I was not in pain! 

‘¢«She never rose again. I saw her sweet face change, her 
golden hair fade—and I did not die! She smiled to hide her 


THE EXILES. 377 


sufferings, but I could read them in her blue eyes, of which 
I could interpret the slightest trembling. ‘* Honorino, I love 
you!’’ said she, at the very moment when her lips turned 
white, and she was clasping my hand still in hers when death 
chilled them. So I killed myself that she might not lie alone 
in her sepulchral bed, under her marble sheet. Teresa is 
above, andI am here. I could not bear to leave her, but God 
has divided us. Why, then did He unite us on earth? He 
is jealous! Paradise was no doubt so much the fairer on the 
day when Teresa entered in. 

*©*«Do you see her? She is sad in her bliss; she is parted 
from me! Paradise must be a desert to her.’ 

‘¢* Master,’ said I with tears, for I thought of my love, 
‘when this one shall desire Paradise for God’s sake alone, 
shall he not be delivered?’ And the Father of Poets mildly 
bowed his head in sign of assent. 

‘We departed, cleaving the air, and making no more noise 
than the birds that pass overhead sometimes when we lie in 
the shade of a tree. It would have been vain to try to check 
the hapless Shade in his blasphemy. It is one of the griefs 
of the angels of darkness that they can never see the light 
even when they are surrounded by it. He would not have 
understood us.’’ 


At this moment the swift approach of many horses rang 
through the stillness, the dog barked, the constable’s deep 
growl replied; the horsemen dismounted, knocked at the 
door; the noise was so unexpected that it seemed like some 
* sudden explosion. 

The two exiles, the two poets, fell to earth through all the 
space that divides us from the skies. The painful shock of 
this fall rushed through their veins like strange blood, hissing 
as it seemed, and full of scorching sparks. Their pain was 
like an electric discharge. The loud, heavy step of a man-at- 
arms sounded on the stairs with the iron clank of his sword, 


378 THE EXILES. 


his cuirass, and spurs; a soldier presently stood before the 
astonished stranger. 

‘*We can return to Florence,’’ said the man, whose bass 
voice sounded soft as he spoke in Italian. 

‘¢ What is that you say ?’’ asked the old man. 

‘¢ The Bianchi are triumphant.”’ 

** Are you not mistaken ?’’ asked the poet. 

‘*No, dear Dante!’’ replied the soldier, whose warlike 
tones rang with the thrill of battle and the exultation of 
victory. 

‘*To Florence! To Florence! Ah, my Florence!’’ cried 
Dante Alighieri, drawing himself up, and gazing into the 
distance. In fancy he saw Italy; he was gigantic. 

“¢But I—when shall I be in heaven?”’’ said Godefroid, 
kneeling on one knee before the immortal poet, like an angel 
before the sanctuary. 

“‘ Come to Florence,’’ said Dante in compassionate tones. 
‘Come! when you see its lovely landscape from the heights 
of Fiesole you will fancy yourself in Paradise.’’ 

The soldier smiled. For the first time, perhaps for the 
only time in his life, Dante’s gloomy and solemn features 
wore a look of joy ; his eyes and brow expressed the happiness 
he has depicted so lavishly in his vision of Paradise. He 
thought, perhaps, that he heard the voice of Beatrice. 

A light step and the rustle of a woman’s gown were 
audible in the silence. Dawn was now showing its first 
streaks of light. The fair Comtesse de Mahaut came in and 
flew to Godefroid. 

‘‘Come, my child, my son! I may at last acknowledge 
you. Your birth is recognized, your rights are under the pro- 
tection of the King of France, and you will find Paradise in 
your mother’s heart.’’ 

‘‘T hear, I know, the voice of heaven!’’ cried the youth 
in rapture. 

: The exclamation roused Dante, who saw the young man 


THE EXILES. 379 


folded in the Countess’ arms. He took leave of them with 
a look, and left his young companion on his mother’s bosom. 

‘Come away!’’ he cried in a voice of thunder. ‘‘ Death 
to the Guelphs!”’ 


Paris, October, 1831- 





THE MESSAGE. 


Translated by ELLEN MAarriaceg. 
To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto. 


I HAVE always longed to tell a simple and true story, which 
should strike terror into two young lovers and drive them to 
take refuge each in the other’s heart, as two children cling to- 
gether at the sight of a snake by a woodside. At the risk of 
spoiling my story and of being taken for a coxcomb, I state 
my intention at the outset. 

I myself played a part in this almost commonplace tragedy ; 
so, if it fails to interest you, the failure will be in part my own 
fault, in part owing to historical veracity. Plenty of things 
in real life are superlatively uninteresting ; so that it is one- 
half .of art to select from realities those which contain possi- 
bilities of poetry. 

In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state 
of my finances obliged me to take an outside place. English- 
men, as you know, regard those airy perches on the top of the 
coach as the best seats ; and for the first few miles I discovered 
abundance of excellent reasons for justifying the opinion of our 
neighbors. A young fellow, apparently in somewhat better 
circumstances, who came to take the seat beside me from 
preference, listened to my reasoning with inoffensive smiles. 
An approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of think- 
ing, a common love of fresh air and of the rich landscape 
scenery through which the coach was lumbering along—these 
things, together with an indescribable magnetic something, 
drew us before long into one of those short-lived traveler’s in- 
timacies, in which we unbend with the more complacency be- 
cause the intercourse is by its very nature transient and makes 
no implicit demands upon the future, 

(380) 


THE MESSAGE. 381 


We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of 
women and of love. Then, with all the circumspection de- 
manded in such matters, we proceeded naturally to the topic 
of our lady-loves. Young as we both were, we still admired 
‘*the woman of a certain age,’’ that is to say, the woman be- 
tween thirty-five and forty. Oh! any poet who should have 
listened to our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond 
Montargis, would have reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, 
rapturous description, and very tender confidences. Our 
bashful fears, our silent interjections, our blushes as we met 
each other’s eyes, were expressive with an eloquence, a boyish 
charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must remain young, 
no doubt, to understand youth. 

Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the 
essential points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom 
at the very outset, that in theory and practice there was no 
such piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate 
of birth; that plenty of women were younger at forty than 
many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a 
woman is no older than she looks. 

This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck 
out, in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when 
we had portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and de- 
voted to us, women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and 
clever ; when we had endowed them with little feet, a satin, 
nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the admission—on 
his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, 
and on mine, that I worshiped a woman of forty. Where- 
upon, as if released on either side by some kind of vague fear, 
our confidences came thick and fast, when we found that we 
were of the same confraternity of love. It was which of us 
should overtop the other in sentiment. 

One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress 
for an hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, 
had prowled about her park to meet her one night. Out 


382 THE MESSAGE. 


came all our follies in fact. If it is pleasant to remember past 
dangers, is it not at least as pleasant to recall past delights? 
We live through the joy a second time. We told each other 
everything, our perils, our great joys, our little pleasures, and 
even the humors of the situation. My friend’s countess had 
lighted a cigar for him; mine made chocolate for me, and 
wrote to me every day when we did not meet; his lady had 
come to spend three days with him at the risk of ruin to her 
reputation ; mine had done even better, or worse, if you will 
have it so. Our countesses, moreover, were adored by their 
husbands; these gentlemen were enslaved by the charm pos- 
sessed by every woman who loves; and, with even supererog- 
atory simplicity, afforded us that just sufficient spice of danger 
which increases pleasure. Ah! how quickly the wind swept 
away our talk and our happy laughter ! 

When we reached Pouilly, I scanned my new friend with 
much interest, and, truly, it was not difficult to imagine him 
the hero of a very serious love affair. Picture to yourselves a 
young man of middle height, but very well proportioned, a 
bright, expressive face, dark hair, blue eyes, moist lips, and 
white and even teeth. A certain not unbecoming pallor still 
overspread his delicately cut features, and there were faint, 
dark circles about his eyes, as if he were recovering from an 
illness. Add, furthermore, that he had white and shapely 
hands, of which he was as careful as a pretty woman should 
be; add that he seemed to be very well informed and was 
decidedly clever, and it should not be difficult for you to 
imagine that my traveling companion was more than worthy 
of a countess. Indeed, manya girl might have wished for 
such a husband, for he was a vicomte with an income of 
twelve or fifteen thousand livres, ‘‘ to say nothing of expecta- 
tions.”’ 

About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. 
My luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the 
edge of a newly ploughed field, instead of following the for- 


THE MESSAGE. 383 


tunes of the vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. 
He either miscalculated in some way, or he slipped ; how it 
happened I donot know, but the coach fell over upon him, 
and he was crushed under it. 

We carried him into a peasant’s cottage, and there, amid 
the moans wrung from him by horrible sufferings, he con- 
trived to give me a commission—a sacred task, in that it was 
laid upon me by a dying man’s last wish. Poor boy, all 
through his agony he was torturing himself in his young sim- 
plicity of heart with the thought of the painful shock to his 
mistress when she should suddenly read of his death in a 
newspaper. He begged me to go myself to break the news 
to her. He bade me look for a key which he wore on a rib- 
bon about his neck. I found it half-buried in the flesh, but 
the dying boy did not utter a sound as I extricated it as gen- 
tly as possible from the wound which it had made. He had 
scarcely given me the necessary directions—I was to go to 
his home at La Charité-sur-Loire for his mistress’ love-letters, 
which he conjured me to return to her—when he grew speech- 
less in the middle of a sentence; but, from his last gesture, I 
understood that the fatal key would be my passport in his 
mother’s house. It troubled him that he was powerless to 
utter a single word to thank me, for of my wish to serve him 
he had no doubt. He looked wistfully at me for a moment, 
then his eyelids drooped in token of farewell, and his head 
sank, and he died. His death was the only fatal accident 
caused by the overturn. 

‘* But it was partly his own fault,’’ the coachman said to 
me. 

At La Charité, I executed the poor fellow’s dying wishes. 
His mother was away from home, which in a manner was fortu- 
nate forme. Nevertheless, I had to assuage the grief of an 
old woman-servant, who staggered back at the tidings of her 
young master’s death, and sank half-dead into a chair when 
she saw the blood-stained key. But I had another and more 


384 THE MESSAGE. 


dreadful sorrow to think of, the sorrow of a woman who had 
lost her last love ; so I left the old woman to her prosopopeia, 
and carried off the precious correspondence, carefully sealed 
by my friend of a day. 

The Countess’ castle was some eight leagues beyond Mou- 
lins, and then there was some distance to walk across country. 
So it was not exactly an easy matter to deliver my message. 
For divers reasons into which I need not enter, I had barely 
sufficient money to take me to Moulins, However, my youth- 
ful enthusiasm determined to hasten thither on foot as fast as © 
possible. Bad news travels swiftly, and I wished to be first 
at the castle. I asked for the shortest way, and hurried 
through the field-paths of the Bourbonnais, bearing, as it 
were, a dead man on my back. The nearer I came to the 
Castle of Montpersan, the more aghast I felt at the idea of 
my strange self-imposed pilgrimage. Vast numbers of romantic 
fancies ran in my head. I imagined all kinds of situations 
in which I might find this Comtesse de Montpersan, or, to 
observe the laws of romance, this ‘ Juliette,’’ so passionately 
beloved of my traveling companion. I sketched out ingenious 
answers to the questions which she might be supposed to put 
to me. At every turn of a wood, in every beaten pathway, 
I rehearsed a modern version of the scene in which Sosie 
describes the battle to his lantern. To my shame be it said, 
I had thought at first of nothing but the part that Z was to 
play, of my own cleverness, of how I should demean myself ; 
but now that I was in the country, an ominous thought flashed 
through my soul like a thunderbolt tearing its way through a 
veil of gray cloud. 

What an awful piece of news it was for a woman whose 
whole thoughts were full of her young lover, who was looking 
forward hour by hour to a joy which no words can express, a 
woman who had been at a world of pains to invent plausible 
pretexts to draw him to her side. Yet, after all, it was a 
cruel deed of charity to be the messenger of death! So I 


THE MESSAGE. 885 


hurried on, splashing and bemiring myself in the by-ways of 
the Bourbonnais. 

Before very long I reached a great chestnut avenue with a 
pile of buildings at the farther end—the Castle of Montpersan 
stood out against the sky like a mass of brown cloud, with 
sharp, fantastic outlines. All the doors of the castle stood 
open. This in itself disconcerted me, and routed all my 
plans; but I went in boldly, and in a moment found myself 
between a couple of dogs, barking as your true country-bred 
animal can bark. The sound brought out a hurrying servant- 
maid ; who, when informed that I wished to speak to Mme. 
la Comtesse, waved a hand toward the masses of trees in the 
English park which wound about the castle, with ‘‘ Madame is 
out there . 

‘* Many thanks,”’ said I ironically. I might have wandered 
for a couple of hours in the park with her ‘out there’’ to 
guide me. } 

In the meantime, a pretty little girl, with curling hair, 
dressed in a white frock, a rose-colored sash, and a broad frill 
at the throat, had overheard or guessed the question and its 
answer, She gave me a glance and vanished, calling in shrill, 
childish tones— 

‘Mother! here is a gentleman who wishes to speak to 
you!”’ 

And, along the winding alleys, I followed the skipping and 
dancing white frill, a sort of will-o’-the-wisp, that showed me 
the way among the trees, 

I must make a full confession. I stopped behind the last 
shrub in the avenue, pulled up my collar, rubbed my shabby 
hat and my trousers with the cuffs of my sleeves, dusted my 
coat with the sleeves themselves, and then gave them a final 
cleansing rub one against the other. I buttoned my coat care- 
fully so as to exhibit the inner, always the least worn, side of the 
cloth, and finally had turned down the bottom of my trousers 


over my boots, artistically cleaned in the grass. Thanks to 
25 





386 THE MESSAGE. 


this Gascon toilet, I could hope that the lady would not take 
me for the local tax-collector; but now, when my thoughts 
travel back to that episode of my youth, I sometimes laugh at 
my own expense. 

Suddenly, just as I was composing myself, at a turning in the 
green walk, among a wilderness of flowers lighted up by a hot 
ray of sunlight, I saw Juliette—Juliette and her husband. The 
pretty little girl held her mother by the hand, and it was easy 
to see that the lady had quickened her pace somewhat at the 
child’s ambiguous phrase. Taken aback by the sight of a 
total stranger, who bowed with a tolerably awkward air, she 
looked at me with a coolly courteous expression and an ador- 
able pout, in which I, who knew her secret, could read the 
full extent of her disappointment. I sought, but sought in 
vain, to remember any of the elegant phrases so laboriously 
prepared. 

This momentary hesitation gave the lady’s husband time to 
come forward. Thoughts by the myriad flitted through my 
brain. To give myself a countenance, I got out a few suffi- 
ciently feeble inquiries, asking whether the persons present 
were really M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse de Mont- 
persan. These imbecilities gave me time to form my own 
conclusions at a glance, and, with a perspicacity rare at that 
age, to analyze the husband and wife whose solitude was about 
to be so rudely disturbed. 

The husband seemed to be a specimen of a certain type of 
nobleman, the fairest ornaments of the provinces of our day. 
He wore big shoes with stout soles to them. I put the shoes 
first advisedly, for they made an even deeper impression upon 
me than a seedy black coat, a pair of threadbare trousers, a 
flabby cravat, or a crumpled shirt collar. There was a touch 
of the magistrate in the man, a good deal more of the coun- 
cilor of the prefecture, all the self-importance of the mayor of 
the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the soured temper 
of the unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned 


THE MESSAGE. 387 


since the year 1816. As to countenance—a weazened, wrinkled, 
sunburned face, and long, sleek locks of scanty gray hair; as 
to character—an incredible mixture of homely sense and sheer 
silliness; of a rich man’s overbearing ways, and a total lack 
of manners; just the kind of husband who is almost entirely 
led by his wife, yet imagines himself to be the master; apt to 
domineer in trifles, and to let more important things slip past 
unheeded—there you have the man! A typical French ‘far- 
mer-gentleman.”’ 

But the Countess! Ah, how sharp and startling the con- 
trast between husband and wife! The Countess was a little 
woman, with a flat, graceful figure and enchanting shape; so 
fragile, so dainty was she that you would have feared to break 
some bone if you so much as touched her. She wore a white 
muslin dress, a rose-colored sash, and rose-colored ribbons in 
the pretty cap on her head; her chemisette was moulded so 
deliciously by her shoulders and the loveliest rounded con- 
tours, that the sight of her awakened an irresistible desire of 
possession in the depths of the heart. Her eyes were bright 
and dark and expressive, her movements graceful, her foot 
charming. An experienced man of pleasure would not have 
given her more than thirty years, her forehead was so girlish. 
She had all the most transient delicate detail of youth in her 
face. In character she seemed to me to resemble the Comtesse 
de Lignolles and the Marquise de B , two feminine types 
always fresh in the memory of any young man who has read 
Louvet’s romance. 

In a moment I saw how things stood, and took a diplomatic 
course that would have done credit to an old ambassador. 
For once, and perhaps for the only time in my life, I used 
tact, and knew in what the special skill of courtiers and men 
of the world consists. 

I have had so many battles to fight since those heedless 
days, that they have left me no time to distill all the least 
actions of daily life, and to do everything so that it falls in 





388 THE MESSAGE. 


with those rules of etiquette and good taste which wither the 
most generous emotions. 

‘¢ Monsieur le Comte,’’ I said with an air of mystery, ‘I 
should like a few words with you,’’ and I fell back a pace or 
two. 

He followed my example. Juliette left us together, going 
away unconcernedly, like a wife who knew that she can learn 
her husband’s secrets as soon as she chooses to know them. 

I told the Comte briefly of the death of my traveling com- 
panion. The effect produced by my news convinced me that 
his affection for his young collaborator was cordial enough, 
and this emboldened me to make reply as I did. 

‘“‘My wife will be in despair,’’ cried he; ‘‘I shall be 
obliged to break the news of this unhappy event with great 
caution.’’ 

“¢ Monsieur,”’ said I, ‘‘ I addressed myself to you in the first 
instance, as in duty bound. I could not, without first in- 
forming you, deliver a message to Madame la Comtesse, a 
message intrusted to me by an entire stranger; but this com- 
mission is a sort of sacred trust, a secret of which I have no 
power to dispose. From the high idea of your character 
which he gave me, I felt sure that you would not oppose me 
in the fulfillment of a dying request. Madame la Comtesse 
will be at liberty to break the silence which is imposed upon 
me.’’ 

At this eulogy, the Count swung his head very amiably, 
responded with a tolerably involved compliment, and finally 
left me a free field. We returned to the house. The bell 
rang, and I was invited to dinner. As we came up to the 
house, a grave and silent couple, Juliette stole a glance at us. 
Not a little surprised to find her husband contriving some 
frivolous excuse for leaving us together, she stopped short, 
giving me a glance—such a glance as women only can give 
you. In that look of hers there was the pardonable curiosity 
of the mistress of the house confronted with a guest dropped 


THE MESSAGE, 389 


down upon her from the skies, and innumerable doubts, 
certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by my youth 
and my expression, all singularly at variance; there was all 
the disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save 
one are as nothing; there were involuntary tremors and 
alarms; and, above all, the thought that it was tiresome to 
have an unexpected guest just now, when, no doubt, she had 
been scheming to enjoy full solitude for her love. This mute 
eloquence I understood in her eyes, and all the pity and com- 
passion in me made answer in a sad smile. I thought of her, 
as I had seen her for one moment, in the pride of her beauty ; 
standing in the sunny afternoon in the narrow alley with the 
flowers on either hand ; and, as that fair wonderful picture 
rose before my eyes, I could not repress a sigh. 

‘* Alas! madame, I have just made a very arduous jour- 
ney , undertaken solely on your account.’’ 

“Sir t?? 

‘‘QOh! it is on behalf of one who calls you Juliette that I 
am come,’’ I continued. Her face grew white. 

‘© You will not see him to-day.’’ 

‘¢Ts he ill?’’ she asked, and her voice sank lower. 

‘*Yes. But for pity’s sake, control yourself- He in- 
trusted me with secrets that concern you, and you may be 
sure that never messenger could be more discreet nor more 
devoted than I.’’ 

‘¢ What is the matter with him?”’ 

‘* How if he loved you no longer ?.”’ 

‘Oh! that is impossible!’’ she cried, and a faint smile, 
nothing less than frank, broke over her face. Then all at 
once a kind of shudder ran through her and she reddened, 
and she gave me a wild, swift glance as she asked— 

‘*Ts he alive ?”’ 

Great God! What a terrible phrase! I was too young to 
bear that tone in her voice; I made no reply, only looked at 
the unhappy woman in helpless bewilderment. 








390 THE MESSAGE, 


‘‘ Monsieur, monsieur, give me an answer!’ she cried with 
vehemence. : 
_ © Yes, madame.”’ 

‘“‘Ts it true? Oh! tell me the truth; I can hear the truth. 
Tell me the truth! Any pain would be less keen than this 
suspense.”’ 

I answered by two tears wrung from me by that strange tone 
of hers. She leaned against a tree, with a faint, sharp cry. 

*¢ Madame, here comes your husband !”’ 

‘¢ Have I a husband ?’’ and with those words she fled away 
out of sight. 

‘‘Well,’’ cried the Count, ‘‘dinner is growing cold. Come, 
monsieur.”’ 

Thereupon I followed the master of the house into the 
dining-room. Dinner was served with all the luxury which 
we have learned to expect in Paris. ‘There were five covers 
laid, three for the Count and Countess and their little 
daughter ; my own, which should have been Azs ; and another 
for the canon of Saint-Denis, who said grace, and then asked— 

‘¢ Why, where can our dear Countess be ?”’ 

‘Oh! she will be here directly,’’ said the Count. He had 
hastily helped us to the soup, and was dispatching an ample 
plateful with portentous speed. 

‘‘Oh! nephew,’’ exclaimed the canon, ‘‘if your wife was 
here, you would behave more rationally.”’ 

‘¢ Papa will make himself ill!’’ said the child with a mis- 
chievous look. 

Just after this extraordinary gastronomical episode, as the 
Count was eagerly helping himself to a slice of venison, a 
housemaid came in with, ‘‘ We cannot find madame anywhere, 
sir!”’ 

I sprang up at the words with a dread in my mind, my fears 
written so plainly in my face that the old canon came out 
after me into the garden. The Count, for the sake of ap- 
pearances, came as far as the threshold. 


THE MESSAGE. 391 


‘* Don’t go, don’t go!’’ called he. ‘Don’t trouble your- 
selves in the least,’’ but he did not offer to accompany us. 

We three—the canon, the housemaid, and I—hurried 
through the garden-walks and over the bowling-green in the 
park, shouting, listening for an answer, growing more uneasy 
every moment. As we hurried along, I told the story of the 
fatal accident, and discovered how strongly the maid was at- 
tached to her mistress, for she took my secret dread far more 
seriously than the canon. We went along by the pools of 
water; all over the park we went; but we neither found the 
Countess nor any sign that she had passed that way. At last 
we turned back, and under the walls of some outbuildings I 
heard a smothered, wailing cry, so stifled that it was scarcely 
audible. The sound seemed to come from a place that might 
have been a granary. I went in at all risks, and there we 
found Juliette. With the instinct of despair, she had buried 
herself deep in the hay, hiding her face in it to deaden those 
dreadful cries—pudency even stronger than grief. She was 
sobbing and crying like achild, but there was a more poignant, 
more piteous sound in the sobs. There was nothing left in 
the world for her. The maid pulled the hay from her, her 
mistress submitting with the supine listlessness of a dying 
animal. The maid could find nothing to say but ‘‘ There! 
madame; there, there 

‘sWhat is the matter with her? What is it, niece?’’ the 
old canon kept on exclaiming. 

At last, with the girl’s help, I carried Juliette to her room, 
gave orders that she was not to be disturbed, and that every 
one must be told that the Countess was suffering from a sick 
headache. Then wecame down to the dining-room, the canon 
and I. 

Some little time had passed since we left the dinner-table ; 
I had scarcely given a thought to the Count since we left him 
under the peristyle; his indifference had surprised me, but 
my amazement increased when we came back and found him 





392 THE MESSAGE, 


seated philosophically at table. He had eaten pretty nearly 
all the dinner, to the huge delight of his little daughter; the 
child was smiling at her father’s flagrant infraction of the 
Countess’ rules. The man’s odd indifference was explained 
to me by a mild altercation which at once arose with the 
canon. The Count was suffering from some serious complaint. 
I cannot remember now what it was, but his medical advisers 
had put him on a very severe regimen, and the ferocious 
hunger familiar to convalescents, sheer animal appetite, had 
overpowered all human sensibilities. In that little space I had 
seen frank and undisguised human nature under two very dif- 
ferent aspects, in such a sort that there was a certain grotesque 
element in the very midst of a most terrible tragedy. 

The evening that followed was dreary. Iwas tired. The 
canon racked his brains to discover a reason for his niece’s 
tears. The lady’s husband silently digested his dinner; con- 
tent, apparently, with the Countess’ rather vague explanation, 
sent through the maid, putting forward some feminine ailment 
as her excuse. We all went early to bed. 

As I passed the door of the Countess’ room on the way to 
my night’s lodging, I asked the servant timidly for news of 
her. She heard my voice, and would have me come in, and 
_ tried to talk, but in vain—she could not utter a sound. She 
bent her head, and I withdrew. In spite of the painful agita- 
tion, which I had felt to the full as youth can feel, I fell asleep, 
tired out with my forced march. 

It was late in the night when I was awakened by the grating 
sound of curtain rings drawn sharply over the metal rods. 
There sat the Countess at the foot of my bed. The light from 
a lamp set on my table fell full upon her face. 

‘**TIs it really true, monsieur, quite true?’’ she asked. ‘‘I 
do not know how I can live after that awful blow which struck 
me down a little while since; but just now I feel calm. I 
want to know everything.”’ 

‘¢ What calm!’’ I said to myself as I saw the ghastly pallor 


THE MESSAGE, 393 


of her face contrasting with her brown hair, and heard the 
guttural tones of her voice. The havoc wrought in her drawn 
features filled me with dumb amazement. 

Those few hours had bleached her; she had lost a woman’s 
last glow of autumn color. Her eyes were red and swollen, 
nothing of their beauty remained, nothing looked out of them 
save her bitter and exceeding grief; it was as if a gray cloud 
covered the place through which the sun had shone. 

I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without 
laying too much stress on some too harrowing details. I told 
her about our first day’s journey, and howit had been filled 
with recollections of her and of love. And she listened 
eagerly, without shedding a tear, leaning her face toward me, 
as some zealous doctor might lean to watch any change in a 
patient’s face. When she seemed to me to have opened her 
whole heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into 
misery with the first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at 
my opportunity, and told her of the fears that troubled the 
poor dying man, told her how and why it was that he had 
given me this fatal message. Then her tears were dried by 
the fires that burned in the dark depths within her. She 
grew even paler. When I drew the letters from beneath my 
pillow and held them out to her, she took them mechanically ; 
then, trembling from head to foot, she said in a hollow voice— 

‘¢And JZ burned all his letters! I have nothing of him 
left! Nothing! nothing!” 

She struck her hand against her forehead. 

** Madame ” T began. 

She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief. 

**T cut this from his head, this lock of his hair.’’ 

And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been 
avery part of him she loved. Ah! if you had felt as I felt 
then, her burning tears falling on your hands, you would 
know what gratitude is, when it follows so closely upon the 
benefit. Her eyes shone with a feverish glitter, a faint ray of 





394 THE MESSAGE. 


happiness gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she grasped 
my hands in hers, and said, in a choking voice and with 
grievous sobs— 

‘*Ah! you love! May you be happy always. May you 
never lose her whom you love.’’ 

She broke off, and fled away with her treasure. 

Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed 
like a dream; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was 
obliged to look fruitlessly under my pillow for the packet of 
letters. There is no need to tell you how the next day went. 
I spent several hours of it with the Juliette whom my poor 
comrade had so praised to me. In her lightest words, her 
gestures, in all that she did and said, I saw proofs of the 
nobleness of soul, the delicacy of feeling which made her 
what she was, one of those beloved, loving, and self-sacrificing 
natures so rarely found upon this earth. 


In the evening the Comte de Montpersan came himself as 
far as Moulins with me. There he spoke with a kind of 
embarrassment— 

‘‘ Monsieur, if it is not abusing your good-nature and act- 
ing very inconsiderately toward a stranger to whom we are al- 
ready under obligations, would you have the goodness, as you 
are going to Paris, to remit a sum of money to M. de 
(I forget the name), in the Rue du Sentier; I owe him an 
amount, and he asked me to send it as soon as possible ?’’ 

<‘Willingly,’’ said I. And in the innocence of my heart I 
took charge of a rouleau of twenty-five louis d’or, which paid 
the expenses of my journey back to Paris; and only when, 
on my arrival, I went to the address indicated to repay the 
amount to M. de Montpersan’s correspondent, did I under- 
stand the ingenious delicacy with which Julie had obliged 
me. Was not all the genius of a loving woman revealed in 
such a way of lending, in her reticence with regard to a 
poverty easily guessed ? 





THE MESSAGE. 395 


And what rapture to have this adventure to tell to a woman 
who clung to you more closely in dread, saying, ‘‘ Oh, my 
dear, not you! you must not die!’’ 


Paris, January, 1832. 


~ 





tee 


4 7 ae a a a 
Hah & 
j th nm f ; 


oo 
aera 


os 
ar 


ae 


re 


chee, 
$ 


sasha 


oe 
ee 





‘phe | 


—~ 





- ew 


UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
Los Angeles 
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. | 





NOV 9 1956 








Form L9-100m-9,’52(A3105)444 


| THE LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY 0 CALIFORNIA 
TAS GELRS- 


NT 


700 306 4 









































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































